Global AI and analytics company SAS has acquired Honolulu-based Kamakura Corp, which provides specialized software, data, and consulting to financial organizations.

“This acquisition is an extension of tremendous investments already made in SAS’ cloud-ready risk management platform and integrated solutions,” said Jim Goodnight, co-founder and CEO, SAS. “It signals our intent to advance market-changing risk solutions to solve the most pressing challenges our financial services customers face. We foresee that the resulting strength of SAS technology, paired with Kamakura’s risk analytics and credit models, will prove far greater than the sum of its parts.”

In acquiring Kamakura, SAS aims to deliver an unparalleled suite of integrated risk solutions, particularly around asset-liability management (ALM), and serve additional facets of the financial services industry.

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“The synergistic value in the melding of two highly complementary risk technology portfolios is undeniable to anyone familiar with SAS and Kamakura; it’s like joining matching puzzle pieces,” said Sidhartha Dash, research director at Chartis. “Merging Kamakura’s strengths — robust ALM and interest rate risk capabilities, proprietary and sophisticated credit models, and risk data — with SAS’ award-winning capabilities in credit risk management and risk and finance integration on SAS Viya is a powerful combination for solutions across the entire balance sheet.”

Banking, insurance sectors

For more than three decades, Kamakura has specialized in software and risk management data for the banking and insurance sectors, currently delivered through two offerings:

The acquisition will bring Kamakura Risk Manager and Kamakura Risk Information Services solutions’ capabilities into the SAS fold, along with Kamakura’s executives, leadership team, employees, and contractors.

Kamakura specifically chose SAS over other potential acquisition suitors based on alignment in the companies’ data-driven, research-oriented cultures and their mutual excellence in modeling and analytics, according to Don van Deventer, chair and CEO, Kamakura, who founded the company in 1990.

“Joining the SAS family represents an exciting new chapter in Kamakura’s 32-year history,” said van Deventer. “In combination, our like cultures will produce synergies that fuel customer and marketplace innovation. More concretely, adding SAS’ cloud-native Viya technology, risk domain capabilities and intuitive, user-friendly interfaces to Kamakura’s IP will spawn a top-tier, market-changing ALM offering.”