Uplift Investors Acquires Engage fi

Uplift Investors has acquired Engage fi from Falfurrias Management Partners, placing a private-equity owner behind one of the firms that helps banks and credit unions choose, negotiate, convert, and operate their technology. Uplift announced the transaction on August 18, 2026. Terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition matters because community financial institutions rarely build the systems that define their customer experience. Core banking, digital banking, payments, CRM, communications, and data platforms come from different vendors. Their contracts and implementation schedules do not naturally align, yet the bank or credit union owns the disruption when a conversion slips, an integration fails, or a renewal leaves too little leverage. Engage fi works inside that decision gap.

The deal is Uplift's third platform investment from its inaugural fund and its second platform organized around a professional-services business model. Uplift closed Fund I at a $670M hard cap in July, giving the new firm capital to pursue its business-model-first strategy across services companies.

What Uplift Investors Acquired

Engage fi is a technology-enabled consulting and advisory firm serving banks and credit unions. It helps institutions evaluate vendors, negotiate contracts, plan technology strategy, manage conversions, and execute programs across core banking, digital banking, payments, integrated communications, and strategic advisory. The company also supports merger and acquisition programs for financial institutions.

The company reports more than 2,700 successful engagements. That figure is not an independently audited customer count, but it shows the scale of experience Uplift is underwriting. Every engagement can add information about pricing, implementation patterns, vendor behavior, conversion risk, and the operational choices that help a financial institution live with its technology long after the contract is signed.

Engage fi also owns software. DataFusion centralizes data management, visualization, and analytics. 360fi Workflow automates workflows across departments and connects to financial-institution core systems. Those products give the business a path to convert accumulated consulting knowledge into repeatable delivery without pretending every institution has the same operating model.

Why the Deal Fits Uplift's Strategy

Uplift was founded in March 2025 by Managing Partners Will Hausberg, Doug Rosenstein, and Brad Skaf. The firm organizes its investment strategy through a 5-5-5 Framework that connects five scalable services business models, five services sectors, and five Value Creation Centers. Those operating centers cover organizational design, go-to-market, talent, technology and data, AI, and M&A integration.

In the transaction announcement, Managing Partner Brad Skaf described Engage fi as a firm positioned at the center of important technology decisions for banks and credit unions. Managing Partner Will Hausberg said Uplift plans to use its go-to-market resources to bring Engage fi's services to more institutions and invest behind its decade of proprietary data and AI-enabled delivery tools.

That language makes the investment logic unusually clear even without financial terms. Uplift is not buying a general consultancy that happens to work in banking. It is buying a specialized decision layer with customer relationships, vendor benchmarks, contract knowledge, conversion experience, and software that can make part of that judgment repeatable.

Andres Pasantes Leads the Next Ownership Chapter

Andres Pasantes is Engage fi's President and CEO. He took the CEO role in October 2025 when co-founder Jennifer Addabbo moved to Executive Chair. Engage fi says Pasantes has worked with more than 1,000 financial institutions across technology assessments, negotiations, mergers, conversions, and digital transformation.

Two months after that leadership transition, Engage fi acquired Intellectual Dimensions. The December 2025 transaction added data automation and business-intelligence capabilities used in core conversions, migrations, and merger preparation. Intellectual Dimensions co-founders Keith Bluford and John Chapman continued in leadership roles inside the combined organization.

The sequence matters. Engage fi entered 2026 with new leadership, a newly acquired data platform, and a broader product surface. Uplift is stepping in after the business had already begun moving from project-based advice toward a mix of advisory, managed execution, data, and workflow software.

Falfurrias Helped Build the Prior Chapter

Falfurrias invested in Engage fi in 2022, when the company was still led by co-founders Jennifer Addabbo and James Guild. At the time, Engage fi reported more than 525 strategic projects and $2.2B in savings and incentives negotiated for clients. The sponsor described growth opportunities in new services, technology, customer segments, and acquisitions.

By the time of the Uplift sale, Engage fi had completed its first acquisition, installed a new CEO, expanded its software capabilities, and reported more than 2,700 engagements. The older project count and current engagement count are not directly comparable, so they should not be converted into a growth rate. Together they show how the business broadened during the ownership period.

The Operating Tension Is Independence

Banks and credit unions hire an adviser because vendors usually know more about the market, contract, pricing, and implementation than the institution buying the system. Engage fi's commercial value depends on representing the client inside that imbalance. The more technology-enabled the adviser becomes, the more carefully it must protect that independence.

Uplift can help Engage fi sell to more institutions, acquire adjacent capabilities, and turn years of benchmarking and delivery experience into software. The opportunity is to make complex decisions faster and migrations less fragile. The risk is allowing a proprietary product, partnership, or growth target to shape advice that clients expect to remain objective.

No purchase price, consideration structure, ownership percentage, financing package, expected close date, or regulatory condition was disclosed. That limits any claim about the deal's economics. It does not hide the strategic direction: Uplift wants to own the firm that helps community financial institutions decide which vendors deserve to become infrastructure.

The consequences will be visible far beyond a deal announcement. Every recommendation eventually reaches an operations team reconciling systems, a branch employee explaining a change, or a member trying to move money. Engage fi now has more resources to influence those decisions, and more responsibility to keep the institution's interest intact while its own platform grows around the work.