Fidelity National Financial announced that it will be acquiring majority stake in SkySlope, a provider of digital transaction management software for real estate.
This is the third major acquisition for FNF, a title insurance and transaction services company, in the previous 18 months, following its purchase of Commissions, Inc. in 2016 and Real Geeks in July.
SkySlope is a cloud-based digital transaction management platform. More than 1,500 brokerages with over 5,000 offices serving 140,000 agents per year use the service — that’s 1.5 million transactions, according to SkySlope.
SkySlope updated its user experience in May.
“SkySlope’s [sic] and Fidelity share a common vision to create a seamless end-to-end real estate transaction experience for consumers, brokers, and title/mortgage service providers and to enable brokerages to have full insight into all aspects of their financial performance and transaction activity,” said Tyler Smith, CEO of SkySlope, in a statement.
He echoes the sentiments of Alvaro Erize, co-CEO of CINC, who earlier this year said (regarding the Real Geeks acquisition) that it was FNF’s plan to become the “indispensable” software provider to real estate agents, brokers and teams.
Erize derides the notion that as technology progresses the agent will take on less of a position in the transaction, though.
“We think the agent is the future. I believe the agent will take the bigger position in the transaction rather than smaller, and we’ll continue to build and aggregate everything with that idea at the core,” said Erize.
Smith continues as head of the leadership team and will maintain his position after the transaction is finalized. “We have big goals, that have gotten even bigger with FNF now on-board,” Smith said. “This transaction marks the beginning of the next great chapter for SkySlope, our customers, and FNF and we’re looking forward to continued growth and shared customer success.”
Smith also said that the company will seek to grow its SkyTC (transaction coordination) and engineering teams in the pursuit of new products.
“SkySlope and Fidelity share in client service obsession, providing a white glove experience and a stellar client support team,” Smith added.
By combining the three aforementioned companies, FNF is positioned to be a full service provider for the end-to-end real estate transaction.
As Brad Inman wrote earlier this year in regard to FNF’s Chairman William Foley: “Foley sees around the bend and seizes opportunity before others take notice. He is also a master of cobbling together and spinning off seemingly disparate pieces and companies.”
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