First American Financial (FAF 1.53%) will soon add another asset to its portfolio. The company announced today that it has reached a deal with Verisk Analytics (VRSK 1.54%) to acquire Interthinx, a firm it describes as "a leading provider of loan quality analytics, decision support tools and loan review services for the mortgage industry." The price is $155 million.
Interthinx was founded in 1996. Its best-known product is FraudGUARD, a fraud analytics solution.
In the press release trumpeting the news, First American Financial quoted its CEO Dennis Gilmore as saying that "the added capabilities of Interthinx will allow us to leverage our central role in real estate transactions to offer our customers further assurances in areas that present risk, including fraud; identity and income validation; collateral adequacy; and compliance."
The transaction is expected to close by the end of next month, and be accretive to First American's 2014 earnings.
The announcement comes exactly a week before the company is slated to release its Q4 2013 results. On average, analysts are expecting a per-share profit of $0.50 on revenues of $1.1 billion.
