Misys
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Headquarters | London, England |
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Key people
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| Owner | Vista Equity Partners |
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Number of employees
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4,500 (2013) |
| Website | www |
Misys provides financial services software covering retail and corporate banking, lending, treasury, capital markets, investment management and enterprise risk.
The company was founded in 1979 by the brothers Roger and Glyn Morgan of Morgan Insurance (Worcester. a company started by their father) as MISys, a computer systems supplier to UK insurance brokers.
The purchase of multiple established players in respective markets by Misys under the leadership of Kevin Lomax (Chairman and/or CEO 1985-2006) allowed Misys to evolve at various times into a software supplier to the US healthcare industry, to banks (worldwide) and to fund managers worldwide. Many of the companies acquired and consolidated by Misys were themselves products of previous mergers.
In 1987 Misys shares were first traded on the Unlisted Securities Market. It was admitted to the Main List of the in 1989, leveraged on the initial successes of the purchases, cross selling to an expanded client base and economies of scale arising from consolidation.
In 1994 Misys entered the banking software space by purchasing Kapiti Ltd. In 1995 Misys purchased ACT (which included BIS and Kindle), thus rapidly giving Misys control of 3 of the 4 biggest selling core banking packages at the time. At time of purchase Midas had the biggest installed base of any "off-the shelf" banking software package.
The biggest banking software company to be brought into the Misys fold was BIS. Business Intelligence Services or BIS Ltd in 1976 had acquired Kingsley-Smith and Associates and a software package named MIDAS developed by KSA. This banking software system was based on a concept of a core multi-currency accounting module. At the time most other International Banks worldwide worked and accounted on a 'single currency' methodology. It was marketed to and operated successfully by a number of client London Banks from 1979. From the mid to late-1980s competition to MIDAS came from vendors with systems called Kapiti, BankMaster (from Kindle) and IBIS. In 1991 ACT purchased Kindle followed by BIS in 1993 uniting two of the biggest selling products under one ownership albeit with different user bases. Midas was focused on its traditional strength of international branch banking in the world's financial centers. The simplicity of Bankmaster and its Branchpower front end sold very well to tier 3 and 4 banks in Africa and South America.
Kapiti Ltd was a privately held packaged banking software house focused on using IBM's mid range computers to server the international branch banking market. Kapiti was founded in 1975 by a Mr. John Kennedy, a New Zealand native and competed directly with the commercially more successful Midas system. Initially headquartered in London, the company moved to Windsor then Slough, Berkshire. In 1990 Kapiti re-branded the well established Kapiti International Banking System (KIBS) as EQUATION 1, sales were still focused on international branch banking with clusters of users in financial centers like London plus some small retail operations in the Gulf. The combination of the port to the new IBM AS/400 platform with its increased processing power, the user friendly EQ2 user interface rework, the performance boost from the EQ3 data base rewrite and the addition of a client server Cashier system had allowed an expansion into retail banking. Kapiti also pursued wholesale banking by merging with Aregon International (dealing room information feeds), purchasing Future Systems (trade capture) and purchasing rights to some reporting tools. None of the acquired companies prospered under Kapiti. However the technical expertise of the Aregon team was exploited to build in house a trade finance system called Trade Innovation (TI) which was commercially successful for 20 years or so.
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