Milliman gains MSR hedging scale with Blue Water buy

Milliman has acquired from Apex Analytics the Blue Water mortgage servicing rights valuation and hedging business.

Terms of the deal, which closed on July 24, were not disclosed.

This was the only portion of Blue Water included in the transaction, said Brett Ludden, managing director and head of mortgage solutions at Milliman.

"There are a small number of companies in the United States that have expertise in MSR advisory, and Blue Water is one of them," Ludden said in an interview. "Milliman acquired Morvest Capital, which was another MSR advisory company back in December of 2025, and we saw this as an opportunity to gain scale and also bring in some additional expertise, both from a technology perspective, but also from a practitioner perspective in the area of MSR hedging."

Going forward, this will be rebranded as the Milliman MSR advisory business, because Apex is retaining other parts of Blue Water, he added.

This deal comes almost two years to the day a prior attempt by the company, then known as Voxtur, to divest a majority 50.5% stake in all of Blue Water Financial Technologies to an investor group headed up by University Bancorp.

Plans were for Voxtur to use the proceeds to pay off debt held by Bank of Montreal.

That transaction was agreed to shortly after Voxtur defeated a proxy fight from Rice Park Capital Management, the former owner of Blue Water.

In 2022, Rice Park Capital sold Blue Water Financial Technologies to Voxtur for $101 million in cash and stock. If the University Bancorp sale had gone through, it would have made an upfront cash payment of $30 million, plus the possibility of up to $9.5 million in earn out bonuses for the majority stake. 

The University Bancorp transaction was cancelled in January 2025, two weeks after financially troubled Voxtur announced it was conducting a review of its strategic alternatives.

Voxtur was renamed Apex Analytics and acquired by Hale Capital Management, a New York-based private equity firm in March. Hale had previously purchased Voxtur's senior secured debt from Bank of Montreal in September 2025.

The sale allows Apex to focus on its core businesses — property intelligence technology, appraisal workflow and assessment solutions.

"Today's announcement allows us to further concentrate our resources, talent, and investment on the technologies that define the future of assessment," said Ryan Marshall, CEO of Apex Analytics, in a press release. "By streamlining our portfolio, we can accelerate innovation in assessment software, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and workflow automation, reinforcing our commitment to becoming a trusted technology leader serving assessors, government agencies, and public-sector property assessment teams."