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Payscale Continues Growth Trend Through Acquisition of Pay Equity Analysis and Compensation Management Software Leader, CURO

Press Releases — Aug 18, 2021

Status

Current

Deal Facts

North America

Buy-and-Build

CURO’s pay equity and compensation management capabilities strengthen Payscale’s unrivaled offering of compensation data, management software and services

Seattle, WA – Today, Payscale, Inc., the leading provider of compensation data, software and services, has acquired CURO Compensation Ltd. (CURO), a global leader in pay equity and compensation management technology. CURO helps employers maximize their talent investments by making fair, equitable and appropriate compensation decisions. The addition of CURO’s products to Payscale’s offering enhance its end to end solutions for organizations to manage every part of their pay strategy.

CURO helps employers to manage compensation processes with confidence, align employee pay with business success, analyze pay gaps and demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging across their workforce. CURO’s software capabilities provide compensation professionals with the much-needed flexibility to perform complex statistical analysis, model out remediation scenarios and put pay equity at the forefront of hiring and promotion decision making.

“Every worker has the right to expect equal pay for equal work and we are committed to help close the wage gap by providing a broad solutions portfolio to help every organization get pay right,” said Scott Torrey, CEO of Payscale. “With the acceleration to hybrid work and the welcome emphasis on social justice, pay equity has shifted even further on to the C-suite agenda. It is fast becoming a part of the day-to-day operations of every organization and must encompass more than just analysis. With Payscale’s focus to build, sell, and support data, software, and services to optimize compensation, this is the perfect time to bring CURO’s global, market leading products to our customers.”

CURO’s Pay Equity software is optimized for local, regional and multi-national pay equity audits. Customers will have access to CURO’s pay equity and merit cycle management modules, while also utilizing Payscale’s compensation tools and market data. The expanded product portfolio will provide added insights into the workforce unlike anything that is currently available in the marketplace, informing compensation decisions throughout the lifecycle and allowing for organizations to promote transparency and more effectively retain top talent. A few exciting features of the platform include:

Self-service pay equity analysis. Users leverage employee pay data to pick and choose variables to conduct pay equity analysis, leaving users with customizable possibilities to identify and quantify pay equity gaps and develop remediation strategies.
Proactive attention areas and proposed remediation. Users can create red flag alerts and receive recommendations for changes which can then be modelled for a variety of potential remediation options to share with leadership teams.
Fair pay check. Users can review the impact that new hires and promotion candidates will have on pay equity within an organization and can build in remediation in real time.
“The combination of CURO and Payscale represents the perfect mix of aligning market leading compensation management and pay equity technology with the largest distribution team in the industry dedicated to the compensation management space,” said Gerry O’Neill, CEO of CURO. “We are further proving our commitment to pay equity by vastly increasing both the number of employees we can impact, and the client base we can access. Being part of a larger organization provides an opportunity to further grow our company, and allows our talent to develop their skills in new ways to meet our customers’ current and future needs”. O’Neill will continue with the growing organization in a leadership capacity for Compensation Management.

“LHRA research shows organizations of all sizes are focusing on compensation and pay equity like never before,” said Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer, Lighthouse Consulting. “The acquisition of CURO sets Payscale apart by further embedding pay equity as an integral part of everyday compensation management, allowing customers to make the right choices in the moment when recruiting new talent while remaining committed to the equitable treatment of their existing workforce. Payscale and CURO represent a powerful combination that will help customers avoid costly one-time analysis and remediation cycles that struggle to provide lasting impact for businesses and their talent.”

“Understanding and addressing the pay gap has never been more important,” said Teri Zipper, Managing Partner, Sapient Insights Group. “Bringing together the data and benchmarks with powerful technology will enable real-time decision making and remediation of pay equity issues, a top priority of the enterprise today. Combining these two organizations will result in a broader set of compensation tools and data and lay the foundation for continued innovation and progress on equitable pay.”

The acquisition comes at a critical time, with Payscale’s recent The State of the Gender Pay Gap in 2021 predicting that the gender pay gap could widen beyond previous levels when women who were staying at home return to the workforce following the pandemic, this makes pay equity crucial for companies moving forward.

Payscale is backed by two leading technology-focused private equity firms, Francisco Partners and Insight Partners, and its acquisition of CURO comes on the heels of its merger earlier this year with Payfactors, a leading compensation data management company.

Together, the combined company has become one of the largest providers of its kind in North America to help job seekers, employees and businesses get pay right. Payscale currently has 10,000 customers, including 53% of the Fortune 500, and prices 27 million jobs annually with $1.4 trillion in value across 198 countries.

Payscale also has close to 100M visitors to the website each year who “Payscale It”, creating the largest crowdsourced database of its kind with more than 65M salary profiles and gives customers the option to integrate more than 10,000 surveys from 300 publishers. Payscale provides multiple options to contrast, manage, and analyze pay data with the confidence to share and advocate for compensation solutions with other business leaders across their organization.

About Payscale

As the industry leader in compensation data and technology, Payscale helps organizations #getpayright. Payscale is the only technology solution for managing compensation that provides multiple sources of transparent, curated, and validated market salary data. Combined with modeling engines that learn continuously to generate practical recommendations and insights, Payscale empowers HR to price jobs and adjust compensation to reflect near real-time changes in the market — all on one trusted data platform. With Payscale’s Adaptive Compensation Advantage, teams operate with efficiency, focused on outcomes rather than manual tasks. To learn how companies like The Washington Post, Perry Ellis International, United Healthcare and The New York Times rely on Payscale to attract and retain top talent, motivate, and engage employees, and plan their future workforce, visit payscale.com.

About Francisco Partners

Francisco Partners is a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology and technology-enabled businesses. Since its launch over 20 years ago, Francisco Partners has invested in more than 300 technology companies, making it one of the most active and longstanding investors in the technology industry. With more than $25 billion in assets under management, the firm invests in opportunities where its deep sectoral knowledge and operational expertise can help companies realize their full potential. For more information on Francisco Partners, please visit www.franciscopartners.com.

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

ABOUT PAYSCALE
PayScale offers powerful compensation management software and precise, real-time, data-driven insights for employees and employers alike. The company is transforming the way organizations of all sizes approach employee compensation by utilizing PayScale’s product offerings and proprietary data to make more informed compensation decisions.