Polaris Software Lab is all set to acquire U.S.-based IdenTrust, a global leader in trusted identity solutions.
The Chennai-based company had already signed a definitive agreement to pick up 85.3 per cent stake in IdenTrust.
Polaris is reported to have picked up this stake from private equity funds and a few individual investors.
Polaris has also committed to infusing primary investment into the American company.
The total investment will be around $20 million, it is learnt. The deal, funded through internal accruals, is expected to be closed in a day or two.
IdenTrust is one of the premier providers of digital identity authentication services to several key banks, the federal identity programmes of the U.S. and supply-chain markets.
IdenTrust Inc. was founded in 1999 by a group of financial institutions that included Citigroup, Bank of America, Chase, Barclays, HSBC and Deutsche. As the only bank-developed identity authentication system, IdenTrust provides a legally and technologically inter-operable environment for authenticating and using identities worldwide.
IdenTrust provides applications that use electronic identities. These help establish contract, grant authority, support secure encrypted data and information storage and secure online interactions/transactions.
IdenTrust shareholders include 20 banks. According to sources, these banks are not part of the ‘share sellers' to Polaris. The U.S. company brings with it an existing customer base of 10 of the world's largest banks, a portfolio of patents and the associated intellectual property and expertise around identity, authentication, encryption, and electronic signatures on a global basis, and strong operational and hosting capabilities.
A top official of Polaris said IdenTrust's products such as Trust SignTM in the certificate space and Trust PrimeTM in the eBAM space were supported by a globally inter-operable legal and technology framework to deliver the highest levels of security on a cloud.
The acquisition of the U.S. firm would facilitate a speedier entry of Polaris into cloud computing space, sources said. Polaris could now place its portfolio of banking products into IdenTrust's cloud-hosted data centre.
The acquisition comes close on the back of Polaris winning a significant deal from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In the face of stiff competition and stringent multi-level evaluation, Polaris has been picked by the apex bank to put in place a new core banking system at the central bank, replacing the existing legacy system. “This is a very prestigious deal,” acknowledged a ranking official of Polaris.
The RBI deal, sources said, was a tribute to the robustness of the core banking solutions developed and deployed by Laser Soft, a subsidiary of Polaris. Sources said Polaris was now clearing the legal decks for the merger of Laser Soft with it.
