LONDON, UK – 4 April 2022 – Davies, the leading specialist professional services and technology business, serving insurance and highly regulated markets, today announced that it has acquired Worksmart, the leading supplier of regulatory technology (“RegTech”) for people and process management.  The Worksmart product range enables organisations to track and manage regulatory processes across: customer complaints & feedback, quality assurance, training & competence, the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (“SM&CR”) in the UK, and the Individual Accountability in Singapore.

Based in Milton Keynes, UK, Worksmart partners with financial services organisations across insurance, banking, investment and consumer credit, helping them to manage the growing complexity of operating within the highly regulated space. Worksmart is the number one provider of RegTech for complaints management and feedback in the Lloyd’s market, and the firm’s proprietary platform ‘Foundation’ remains the “go to” solution for training & competence needs within the Banking and Wealth Management sectors. The firms SaaS solution ‘Accord’ is the only purpose-built SM&CR tech available in the UK.

Through Worksmart’s platform, organisations can track & manage employees’ competence, capability and training needs, manage complaints using intelligent workflow and root cause analysis functionality, assess the quality assurance of advised sales processes using automated case allocation, as well as test the competence of employees to ensure regulatory requirements are met.

Worksmart will join Davies’ established Technology unit, led by CEO Mark Grocott. The firm’s Managing Director, Andy Nightingale will continue to lead the business, and all Worksmart employees will continue in their roles within Davies.

In recent years Davies has diversified and deepened its Consulting & Technology capability to provide customer experience, resourcing and learning solutions, as well as data & speech analytics. In December 2021, the firm expanded its international technology transformation & digitalisation, international regulatory compliance, and risk management capability for its insurance, banking, and wider highly regulated clients through the acquisition of Sionic and brought together its technology and innovation expertise to help clients tackle challenges in customer and employee experience, claims management, data & compliance, business processes, digital innovation and intelligent automation.

Davies added a fully automated low-value property claims offering to its platform through the acquisition of Building Validation Solutions Group of companies in December 2021 and has in recent years increased its annual investment in innovation and digital transformation more than four-fold, including in its CQ claims processing platform, legal AI and automation, its video and drone claims handling solutions, as well as virtual reality training solutions.

Globally, Davies’ 5,500+ colleagues operate across Bermuda, Canada, India, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and US. The business delivers professional services and technology solutions across the risk and insurance value chain, including excellence in claims, underwriting, distribution, regulation, customer experience, human capital, digital transformation & change management.

Dan Saulter, Group CEO of Davies commented: “I’m thrilled to welcome Andy and the whole Worksmart team to Davies. The business has an excellent track record of helping financial services and insurance firms strengthen their security and compliance through innovative technology platforms.”

He added: “The growing complexity in the UK regulatory market creates a burden for businesses operating in highly regulated markets. The pace of change in the UK regulatory landscape is quickening and sophisticated RegTech platforms will be essential for regulated entities who want to make the most of the opportunities the changing regulatory landscape brings. The addition of Worksmart’s Accord and Foundation platforms to our growing technology suite enables us to bring a new and exciting market-leading RegTech offering to our 1,000+ clients globally.”

Andy Nightingale, Managing Director of Worksmart added: “I’m very pleased Worksmart is becoming part of Davies which has a shared focus on innovation and digital transformation to help financial services firms make the most of increasing complexities in regulated markets. I look forward to working with Dan, Mark and the wider Davies team to develop and strengthen our RegTech solutions for our clients.”