Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has led an investment, alongside existing shareholders Par Equity and the Scottish Investment Bank, in Edinburgh-based Symphonic Software Limited, a global player in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market. The funding will be used to further scale the business, investing in sales and marketing resource, as well as product innovation, to ensure Symphonic continues to offer customers a best-of-breed solution in this important and growing market.
Authorisation software solution
Symphonic has developed a fine-grained, context-aware authorisation software solution that enables organisations to securely share critical, time-dependent and sensitive information by managing access to data and services in the inter-connected digital economy. It does this by enabling the user to set rules and controls, even for the most complex administrative requirements, at extreme granular levels.
Heightened security, is driving market demand as customers’ interactions with the organisation become deeper and more complex
A powerful policy management interface incorporated into the system provides centralised visibility and control over the policies that apply to an enterprise's entire digital landscape. This makes access management more simple and agile, helping support rapidly emerging needs for sharing data both inside and outside an organisation, while maintaining compliance with internal policies and external regulations.
Heightened security, an emphasis on risk management and the introduction of ever-increasing digital access channels, is driving market demand as customers’ interactions with the organisation become deeper and more complex. As a result, the IAM market is growing rapidly and is forecast to be worth in excess of $20 billion by 2022.
Sophisticated access management
Data security, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Open Banking regulations are just some of the initiatives forcing Symphonic’s financial customers to undertake major re-engineering programmes that inevitably involve the deployment of a sophisticated access management solution. Under the latest open banking regulations, banks are now required to share the data they hold on their customers, safely and securely with authorised third parties.
Symphonic is targeting further growth in retail banking and other sectors and is well positioned to expand into new markets"
The aim of the regulation is to bring more competition and innovation to the financial services market, which should in turn lead to more and better products. Symphonic’s solution enables financial institutions to manage the new, complex access patterns resulting from open banking whilst delivering the right balance between security and customer experience. Symphonic clients can react quickly to new threats whilst lowering their costs by defining their access control policies in a single location.
Significant new regulation
David Milroy, Partner at Maven, said: “We are delighted to be leading the investment in Symphonic Software. The company operates in a high growth sector driven by significant new regulation. Symphonic is targeting further growth in retail banking and other sectors and is well positioned to expand into new markets. We look forward to working with Derick and his team over the coming years to scale the business and deliver on its growth strategy.”
Derick James, CEO at Symphonic, added: “We are very pleased to maintain our strong relationship with Par Equity and the Scottish Investment Bank and are delighted to welcome Maven as part of this latest investment round. The team at Symphonic is looking forward to continuing to drive the company’s success with the support of our new and existing investors”.
