After high hopes deflate, software maker InsPro sold to rival for $12 million; and other deals

Feb. 5--Majesco, a publicly traded life insurance software maker based in Morristown, N.J., has agreed to acquire money-losing rival InsPro Technologies Corp. of Eddystone for $12 million.

With other investors, Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia and Radnor-based Cross Atlantic Capital Partners pumped more than $14 million into InsPro in the late 2000s, in hopes it would grow into a dominant policy administration company linking insurers, agents, and customers smoothly, but it has had a tough time in recent years in a competitive industry.

InsPro shares, traded over the counter, peaked at around 16 cents a share in 2016, but have traded below 1 cent a share over the last year. Cross Atlantic founder Donald Caldwell served as InsPro's chairman.

Life insurance automation has been a lucrative business -- for some. Exton-based iPipeline, which makes software for life insurance agencies, sold for $1.625 billion last year to Florida-based Roper Technologies Inc. That price was four times what owner Thoma Bravo paid Radnor-based NewSpring Capital and other investors for iPipeline in 2015.

InsPro had been looking "long and hard" for a buyer, InsPro executive John Heidelberger said in a statement. "We are delighted to join the Majesco family," he added. Nomura International Securities and the Philadelphia law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius aided InsPro in its search.

Sellers include Independence, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners' Co-Investment Fund, and Trustmark, one of InsPro's major customers. Others include health insurance giants Aetna and Cigna.

Heidelberger said InsPro's "business policy processing experience coupled with Majesco's significant investments in digital solutions" will boost sales, creating new jobs. He referred questions about whether Majesco would keep the Eddystone offices in the long term to Majesco officials, who did not immediately return calls.

InsPro's predecessor, Systems Consulting Associates Inc., was founded in 1986 by Robert J. Oakes. He landed a contract with Philadelphia-based Provident Mutual Insurance Co. to build and run a direct-marketing and policy administration system, which was updated in the early 2000s into the InsPro Enterprise platform.

InsPro competed with products made by Accenture, Fiserv, Majesco, and other national providers.

Revenues fell and the company became unprofitable after founder Oakes' retirement from day-to-day operations in 2017. In 2018, the company noted a large write-off after it ceased operations in Florida. InsPro financed its licenses of Microsoft software through PNC Equipment Finance LLC and its IBM licenses with IBM Credit LLC through arrangements scheduled to expire over the next two years.

Separately, Anpac Bio-Medical Science Co. Ltd., a China-based company that is developing "early cancer screening and detection" tests at its labs at the Spring House Innovation Park in Montgomery County and others in Lishui, China, and San Jose, Calif., has raised $16 million in its initial public stock offering (IPO), with help from Chinese-American broker Univest Securities LLC.

Anpac says it will use about 30% of the proceeds for research studies in the U.S. and China; another 30% "for the expansion of our marketing and sales channels in China, and our clinical laboratory expansion in the U.S.," and the rest for "general corporate purposes."

Founders are Chris Chang Yu, who in 1990 earned a physics doctorate at Penn State and has been an engineer at Motorola, Micron Technology, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International, among other U.S. and Chinese companies; and He Yu, program director of cancer epidemiology at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, who teaches a course at Yale School of Public Health. Each holds over 100 patents.

In other deals, Comoto Holdings, the private-equity-backed parent company of Philadelphia-based online motorcycle gear dealer RevZilla and the Cycle Gear stores in the western U.S., says it has acquired J&P Cycles, which sells gear for American V-Twin motorcycles, according to a statement by chief executive Ken Murphy. The price was not disclosed.

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