Company History

The origins of DFA Capital Management Inc. (DFA) date back to 1997, when the senior executive team responsible for the financial affairs of Zurich Insurance Company (ZH Group) developed a plan to reengineer the insurer's financial management processes and information infrastructure by employing a dynamic financial analysis methodology. This team, headed by Markus Rohrbasser, a member of the Executive Board and CFO of ZH Group, initially sought a software solution through third party consultants and software developers. After an extensive review of the available alternatives, the senior leadership team determined that no adequate solution was available and undertook the task of developing an in-house solution.

As the development process commenced, and the potential, significance, and scope of the effort was better understood, ZH Group determined that the massive project should be conducted through an independent entity, one that was adequately financed and geared toward widespread commercial application, so in January 1999, DFA was born.

DFA began developing its ADVISE™ platform, setting out to conquer one of the last frontiers in the financial services industry. DFA received over $30 million in funding from the ZH Group and set course on a multi-year development effort. This timeframe permitted the company to pursue a world-class, no-compromise approach to designing, producing, and deploying a solution, which included a leading edge economic model, an infinitely scalable computation architecture, and realistic, flexible business logic. DFA was determined to create a platform upon which insurance companies could create, quantify, and manage business value - today, tomorrow and well into the future.

Members of DFA's senior management team have held executive positions in general insurance management, bank management, risk management, trading, corporate finance, mergers & acquisitions, private equity, and asset management, with careers spanning over 25 years. More specifically, the team has extensive experience in the deployment of sophisticated financial modeling techniques used by banking businesses with balance sheets exceeding $30 billion in assets.

Building the ADVISE platform required collaboration from an exceptionally intelligent and experienced team using a multi-disciplinary approach. That team included experts in the fields of actuarial sciences, insurance management, quantitative finance, operations research, econometrics, technology and software. Having such a commanding and authoritative team driving this effort was the only way to achieve the goal. In May 2002, after successful pilot implementations, DFA announced the official launch of ADVISE for property and casualty insurance companies. DFA then selectively added clients to validate the product in the marketplace.

DFA management reached an agreement with Zurich in 2003 to buyout their equity stake, thus removing any potential conflicts of interest and allowing DFA management and new investors to fully benefit from the tremendous potential of its business.

In May 2004, DFA completed a $7 million round of additional funding and to support further growth, and in May 2007, the company announced a joint strategic partnership with Teradata to integrate DFA’s ADVISE™ and GEMS™ with Teradata’s industry-leading data warehouse technologies and capabilities to provide an innovative enterprise risk and capital management solution to the primary carriers and reinsurers in the property, casualty, life and annuity sectors of the insurance industry for North America and Europe.

Today, DFA is the only company to provide a fully tested, ready-to-use, simulation-based integrated Enterprise Risk Management solution capable of modeling an entire company. With its modular architecture, DFA offers companies a flexible growth path for implementing ERM, while enabling them to achieve real competitive advantage through greater accuracy in decision-making, regulatory and ratings agency compliance, and in the allocation of capital and resources.

DFA's vision is to be the leading advisor to the insurance industry and other targeted areas of financial services, working with management teams to uncover the risks they’ve been missingSM in their company and to help them to profit from it.

Company Information

Overview

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