Capita Insurance Services is to buy claims specialist company Brownsword and with it the rights to offer the Digilog lie detection technology to the insurance market.
The purchase, due to be announced to Brownsword staff later this week, will give Capita the exclusive licence to Digilog voice risk analysis (VRA) software within the insurance market and preferred supplier rights to offer it to the wider financial sector.
A market source said: "Brownsword has already moved some of its 80 permanent staff into Capita offices in Birmingham. The deal is going to be announced in a matter of days."
Brownsword currently operates out of four offices in Manchester, Birmingham, Folkestone, Kent and Brentwood, Essex. Its founder and chief executive David Brownsword is thought to own about 30% of the company with the rest owned by venture capitalists.
The source said: "This deal will give Capita an open door into a lot of claims handling business with a number of insurers working with Brownsword. Potentially Capita will be able to broaden the service Brownsword currently offers to those insurers to include a number of other outsourced services."
A number of insurers, including Royal & SunAlliance, Cox, HBOS, Allianz Cornhill, Admiral and Highway, are currently running pilots with lie detector technology. Norwich Union remains one of the few mainstream motor underwriters to resist the new technology.
Both Capita and Brownsword refused to comment on the deal.
