Welcome to Behind the Buyouts, the Deal’s podcast where we sit down with private equity and venture capital pros and entrepreneurs and talk about their deals.

This week’s guest is Steve Pierson, managing partner at financial services-focused private equity firm Lovell Minnick Partners LLC.

Pierson, whose career spans big corporate banks as well as more than five years at Philadelphia-based Lovell Minnick, has charted an evolution in the financial technology business from data centers built decades ago by large corporate banks for their tech infrastructure needs, into a technology-enabled services business with smaller, more nimble players challenging incumbents.

“You’ve seen venture capital-funded firms on the West Coast, nipping at the heels of the big branded institutions both on the insurance side as well as on the banking side,” Pierson said. “There’s pressure from the competition of these smaller, more nimble players and in some cases more lightly regulated [players].”

The smaller challengers have driven the larger shops to innovate as well, he said, a trend has accelerated in the past five-plus years.

“What the larger guys have needed to do is catch up, or hire from, or in many cases acquire, or partner with these smaller, more tech-enabled firms,” Pierson said.

Pierson also talked about his firm’s sale of compliance software company Foreside Financial Group LLC to Genstar Capital Management LLC in July, as well as 2019 deals including the carve-out of BluePay Inc. from First Data Corp.; its purchase of FX trading platform OneZero Financial Systems LLC; and the sale of equipment financing company Commercial Credit Group Inc. to BDT Capital Partners LLC.

Here’s the podcast:

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