UPDATE:

FNC says it will stay in Oxford.

“FNC is very excited about the opportunity that we’ve been presented with,” said Marketing Director Jon Fisher in an email this morning. “CoreLogic is investing in FNC because they believe in our strong industry position and our potential for growth and is committed to helping us grow and succeed right here in Oxford. FNC will continue to operate as we have and we look forward to continuing our involvement in the community.”

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CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, announced Thursday that the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire FNC Inc..

FNC is an Oxford-grown, leading provider of real estate collateral information technology and solutions that automate property appraisal ordering, tracking, documentation and review for lender compliance with government regulations.

The purchase price is $475 million, according to a news release.

The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2016 and is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearance. The transaction will be funded using cash on hand and debt.

“We are very pleased to add the FNC management and staff to the CoreLogic family. FNC is a pioneer in developing unique collateral information and technology platforms for the U.S. lending ecosystem. Its business has been built around recurring, high-margin revenue streams. The acquisition of FNC is an important step in our development of a world-class property valuation solutions capability,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic. 

“FNC’s platforms, together with our existing valuation-related assets and our recent acquisition of LandSafe Appraisal Services, allow us to gain operational scale and expand the value proposition of our VSG.  We expect property valuation to be an area of significant future domestic and international growth.”

FNC Inc. was founded in the mid-1990s by former University of Mississippi professors and mortgage industry experts Bill Rayburn and Dennis Tosh. Rayburn and Tosh subsequently collaborated with fellow professors Bob Dorsey and John D. Johnson, as well as Ole Miss Ph.D. student Duncan Chen, to develop the real estate collateral management software that would eventually become the firm’s flagship product, the Collateral Management System, or CMS.

FNC pioneered new ways to streamline lenders’ mortgage-approval processes with its Collateral Management System. Its products were designed to take paper out of the process.

End users of FNC’s products include some of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, among them Bank of America, Countrywide and Wells Fargo. Since its humble beginning in a single office on the Ole Miss campus, FNC has grown to employ more than 300 people in offices across the United States.

Innovators

In 2012, the firm made The FinTech 100, a ranking of fastest-growing tech companies in the world. In 2013, the company went global when it opened an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

CoreLogic is a global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider. The company’s combined data from public, contributory and proprietary sources includes over 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years, providing detailed coverage of property, mortgages and other encumbrances, consumer credit, tenancy, location, hazard risk and related performance information. The markets CoreLogic serves include real estate and mortgage finance, insurance, capital markets, and the public sector. Headquartered in Irvine, California, CoreLogic operates in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific.

Future in Oxford?

It’s not immediately known what the buyout means as far as FNC’s campus here in Oxford, however the company has been working on a new 68,000-square-foot complex on 20-25 acres of land that would allow for future growth.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in December 2014 with Gov. Phil Bryant being the first to ceremoniously shovel dirt on the site. Not much else appears to have been done to the site since.

The campus is part of a new Planned Employment Center Overlay District that was approved by the Oxford Board of Aldermen last year. The purpose of the district is to attract similar tech companies, like FNC Inc., to Oxford.

A land disturbance  and building permit has been pulled, the city said.

FNC officials did not immediately respond to questions this morning regarding FNC’s commitment to the programs it is actively involved with in the local community, including FNC Park. FNC Inc. agreed to spend $500,000 over a 10-year period for naming rights to the park in 2008. In 2009, FNC committed $15,000 a year for 15 years to lease parking spaces at Bailey Branch Park to help pay for the maintenance of the park, which is located directly across the street from FNC’s current campus.