Brain Power: Solution Provider SS&C Buys Stake In Learning Tech Provider

Solution provider SS&C Technologies beefed up its arsenal of training offerings for its financial services clients after buying a minority interest in a company that applies advances in neuroscience to make learning more efficient and effective.

Windsor, Conn.-based SS&C – No. 38 on the 2015 CRN Solution Provider 500 list – bought a one-third interest in Nervanix, Naples, Fla., the company said in a statement Wednesday. Nervanix’s founder and CEO, Adam Hall, will join SS&C as a senior vice president and will continue to be the majority owner of Nervanix, according to Normand Boulanger, SS&C’s chief operating officer.

As part of the agreement, Nervanix will receive product development help from SS&C, while SS&C will have exclusive rights to sell Nervanix’s signature product, Clarity, to financial services companies, according to Boulanger.

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The key to Clarity is its ability to gauge how well a user is paying attention to what he or she is learning through the use of a ’simple and safe’ headset that measures brain activity. If the user is distracted or not paying adequate attention, the technology adjusts the pace of learning to help ensure the user absorbs as much of the content as possible.

SS&C works to customize training with customers who need to ensure that their employees are knowledgeable and effective, especially with all the procedures that can expose them to risk, Boulanger said. He cited as examples wire transfers and calculating the net asset values of hedge funds, ’places where people have operational risk,’ he said.

Boulanger said Clarity will be incorporated into SS&C’s Zoologic line of learning solutions, which encompass individual, Web-based and in-class instruction.

’You’re trying to enrich the capability SS&C has by leveraging technology and innovation,’ he said. ’You’re always trying to find ways to make customers more effective.’

Hall, who holds an economics degree and has professional experience in investment banking, will report to Boulanger and oversee the Zoologic line, according to Boulanger.

Nervanix has about 10 full-time equivalent employees, Boulanger said.

Adding Hall to the management team ’gives us additional breadth and will help us drive all of our businesses forward," SS&C’s chairman CEO, Bill Stone, said in the statement.

SS&C has about 10,000 financial services customers that manage more than $44 trillion in assets.

’SS&C’s tremendous strength in financial services learning and training, along with its leadership position in financial technology, not only will accelerate Nervanix’s vision, but also provide SS&C’s customers with a powerful, integrated solution to transform their end-to-end customer experience,’ Hall said in the statement.