Sword Group acquires AgencyPort

First Combination of Distribution, Policy Administration and CRM Components to the P&C Industry

19 November 2009

New York and Boston – 19 November 2009: Sword Group (NYSE Euronext: SWP) today announced the acquisition of the full share capital of privately-held Boston-based AgencyPort, the industry leader in insurance distribution technology. The acquisition is further evidence of Sword’s commitment to the global insurance marketplace and to expand its presence in the North American market.

Founded in 2000, AgencyPort provides web-based software and solutions to property and casualty insurance companies to automate distribution. With a blue-chip customer base in excess of 50 insurers, AgencyPort brings Sword Group a widely-installed software base, a development and delivery organization with deep domain expertise and an accomplished management team within the insurance technology industry.

Coinciding with the acquisition Steve Hauck, co-founder of AgencyPort, will lead Sword’s insurance division as CEO in the Americas and AgencyPort co-founder Eric Harnden will take on the Global role of CTO for Sword in insurance. They will join an elite team of executives from Sword to drive the newly-combined division consisting of 350 experienced staff, pro-forma revenues of more than $77 million in 2009 and forecasted revenue of $100 million in 2010.

Sword’s insurance proposition will bring a unique combination of products that span policy administration (Sword Intech) and multi-channel CRM (Sword Ciboodle) with AgencyPort’s distribution technology (the renamed Sword AgencyPort). Each of these three components will retain its own product development strategy to remain best-in-class and additional resources will be allocated to realize product integration.

Commenting on the impact on the property & casualty market, Matthew Josefowicz, head of the insurance practice at Novarica stated “Bringing together AgencyPort's strong front-end solutions and loyal client base with Sword's core processing and CRM capabilities creates a very interesting option for US P&C insurers."

Heath Davies, Chief Executive Officer Sword Group said, “The acquisition of AgencyPort is a strategic step for the Group and our customers. We are moving towards our goal of providing an impressive a-la-carte portfolio of leading software solutions encompassing policy administration, CRM and distribution technology to the global insurance marketplace. AgencyPort’s customer base in the Americas, ACORD-based product suite and over 100 professionals trained in insurance IT delivery will be a strong addition to our existing operations and key ingredients as we grow our US and global market footprint.”

“We are very pleased that AgencyPort has joined Sword Group,” confirmed Steve Hauck. “Sword is a rapidly growing and global software business with a proven acquisition strategy which allows us to immediately extend our market presence and offer even greater value to both the Sword and AgencyPort client bases. The best reflection of our strategic synergy is the fact that already numerous customers and prospects are engaged in evaluating the combination of our respective offerings.”

“This agreement brings together a unique combination of best-of-breed components,” said AgencyPort’s Eric Harnden. “Our team, our culture, our focus on innovation and our ability to execute for customers have been the key drivers for our success and these won’t change. Sword brings us both a complementary suite of proven products and the resources needed to help us scale on a global level such as internationalization of our products, 24x7 hosting services, offshore development and a global delivery infrastructure.”

Kevin Ebers, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at WR Berkley stated: “As a customer of both Sword Intech and AgencyPort, we are enthusiastic about deriving the additional value resulting from the combination of these two companies.”

For more information about Sword’s software portfolio visit www.sword-group.com

For more information on AgencyPort, visit www.agencyport.com