Qualitest to continue on acquisition trail, says CEO

Norm Merritt is still relatively new to the role of CEO at Qualitest, the global testing company that describes itself as “the largest pure-play testing company in the world”.  It was only in September 2018 that Merritt stepped up to replace the departing Ayal Zylberman in the leadership role. Yet last month Qualitest was able to announce that Bridgepoint Capital has acquired a majority stake in its business for a reported $420m. Qualitest is now targeting more clients in the banking and financial services sector in particular, and will be looking at acquisitions to help speed growth, Merritt told QA Financial.  Growth in the BFSI vertical is: “One of our key strategies going into the future, whether we continue to organically grow or maybe find companies that we could acquire to give us increased breadth and capabilities,” Merritt said. In May 2018 – shortly before Merritt officially took the helm at Qualitest – the company acquired the testing divisions of Atlanta-based software re-seller Orasi Software and the IT services provider NCC Group. It later signed a collaboration agreement with DeepCoding, an Israeli AI startup backed by venture capital. Merritt won’t name Qualitest’s current financial services client, but claims to have won a number of new contracts recently, including fintech disrupter firms. “We have a whole team of subject matter experts who understand the latest in the financial sector,” said Merritt. “That’s what our clients hire us for. Not only do we understand their sector, we also understand the horizontal skill-sets required to drive quality engineering in those sectors.”  “The testing market is growing at 10% and the outsource market is growing by about 13%. Qualitest as a company is growing faster than the market because we have a differentiated product, we are pure-play and we have really strong IP.”