Data analytics giant Black Knight announced on Friday its plans to purchase Top of Mind Networks (Top of Mind) for $250 million. The deal will allow Black Knight access to Top of Mind’s brain child, Surefire, a customer relationship management system and marketing automation software for the mortgage lending industry.
“Through its Surefire marketing automation and CRM platform, Top of Mind has brought incredible value to the sales and marketing side of the mortgage industry by helping lenders gain powerful competitive advantages for their loan officers,” said Anthony Jabbour, CEO of Black Knight. “Integrating Surefire’s capabilities within the wider Black Knight mortgage technology ecosystem will make it possible for lender clients of all sizes to close more loans and create customers for life.”
The software boasts an all-in-one connectivity between LOSs, CRM, POSs, lead sources and sales acceleration systems. It relies mainly on automatic updates and AI-driven communications with borrowers. So rather than internal staff making follow-up calls and answering questions, Surefire claims to speed this process along through a more digital route ― a parallel theme to Black Knight’s other recent acquisitions.
Black Knight said it intends to integrate Surefire with its Empower LOS as well as enhance its Optimal Blue PPE before connecting it in to other programs. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021, and will contribute approximately $13 million in incremental revenue to Black knight’s origination software business in the second half of 2021.
The data giant made a clean sweep in 2020, picking up HeavyWater, a provider of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the financial services industry, as well as Collateral Analytics and its appraiser and AVM tools.
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Last July, the company acquired Optimal Blue just weeks after it reported it was up for sale for $1.8 billion and combined Optimal Blue’s PPE capabilities into its offerings and analytics engine.
In August, Black Knight acquired DocVerify to boost its e-notarization abilities as part of its goal of “digitizing the entirety of the real estate and mortgage continuum.” At the time of the acquisition, Black Knight said it planned to eventually offer a 100% digital closing.
In March 2021, the analytics behemoth acquired a cloud-based loan origination system from NexSpring Financial in an effort to expand its broker product offerings.
“The acquisition of Top of Mind is a continuation of our strategy to deliver innovative solutions to our clients that will help them achieve their strategic priorities,” Jabbour added.
Our combined clients will be able to access additional market-leading offerings from a single, trusted provider, while we will be able to further expand Black Knight’s opportunities to cross-sell our solutions through Top of Mind’s broad reach among more than 850 commercial banks, mortgage banks, credit unions and mortgage brokerage companies,” said Jabour.
