Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer N.V. is a Dutch multinational company that provides information, software, and services for accountants, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. The company serves legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare markets.

Wolters Kluwer's product portfolio includes: UpToDate, CCH, Enablon, CT Corporation, Lippincott, CCH Tagetik, Inview, Brightflag, Ovid, TeamMate.

The company's global headquarters are in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands.

History

Early history

Jan-Berend Wolters founded the Schoolbook publishing house in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1836. In 1858, the Noordhoff publishing house was founded alongside the Schoolbook publishing house. In 1987, Elsevier, the largest publishing house in the Netherlands, announced its intentions to buy up Kluwer's stock. The merger made Wolters Kluwer the second-largest publishing house in the Netherlands. By the end of the year, Wolters Kluwer expanded its presence to Spain, West Germany and France. In 1989, 44% of the company's revenue was earned in foreign markets. The following year, it established its first Eastern European subsidiary, IURA Edition, in Bratislava, Slovakia. The company acquired Jugend & Volk, Dalian, Fateco Fîrlag and Juristfîrlaget, Deutscher Kommunal-Verlag Dr. Naujoks & Behrendt, and Colex Data in 1995. Wolters Kluwer was operating in 16 countries and had approximately 8000 employees by the end of that year. In 1995, Wolters Kluwer acquired CT Corporation. The following year, it purchased CCH Inc., a tax and business materials publisher, for $1.9 billion. The purchase assisted in expanding the company's business in Asia because of CCH Inc.'s involvement in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Waverly, Inc., Ovid Technologies, Inc. and Plenum Publishing Corporation were acquired in 1998 to develop Wolters Kluwer's medical and scientific publishing industry. (It is now part of Springer). The company established its first three-year strategy to deliver sustained value to customers and shareholders in 2003. In September 2008, Wolters Kluwer acquired UpToDate, an evidence-based electronic clinical information resource. The following month, the company received a multi-year contract to provide prescription and patient-level data to the United States Food and Drug Administration. In 2009, Wolters Kluwer was named the "Best Place to Work" in Spain by the Great Place to Work Institute.

2010s–2020s

Wolters Kluwer Deutschland, the German subsidiary of the company, launched Legal Tribune Online in April 2010. The online magazine, which provides German-language news and analysis about current developments in law and related subjects, ranked among the top 20 most visited online professional journals. In September of that year, Wolters Kluwer acquired FRSGlobal, a financial regulatory reporting and risk management firm.

The company acquired SASGAS, a provider of financial reporting software to banks in China, in October 2011. That December, Wolters Kluwer acquired Medknow, an open access publisher. Also in 2011, Wolters Kluwer sold its pharmaceutical industry-related Marketing and Publishing Service division to Springer Science+Business Media, which led to a workforce reduction at its facility in Ambler, Pennsylvania, eventually leading to the site's closure in 2013.

In 2012, Wolters Kluwer acquired Acclipse, an accounting software provider, and Finarch, makers of a platform for financial institutions to manage data, compliance, and risk. The company's health division tested technology to identify and treat sepsis in December. Wolters Kluwer acquired Health Language, a medical terminology management provider, in January 2013. The company acquired CitizenHawk, an American online brand protection and global domain recovery specialist, in September 2013. That month, Wolters Kluwer acquired Svenson, an Austrian regulatory reporting solutions provider. The acquisition enabled both companies to assist Austrian banks and insurance companies in meeting national and international regulatory requirements. In May 2014, Wolters Kluwer launched UpToDate, a clinical decision support resource, in the United Kingdom. UpToDate was launched throughout Western Europe a month later. Wolters Kluwer acquired Datacert, a Houston, Texas-based enterprise legal management software and services provider in April 2014.

The company partnered with Anhembi Morumbi University, a private university in São Paulo, Brazil, to provide information and resources to healthcare students and professionals in June 2014. That same year, the company's CCH eSign software won the CPA Practice Advisor Magazine's Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Award, as well as the Software and Information Industry Association's Best Enterprise Mobile Application Award. The company partnered with Broadridge Tax Services in August 2014 to facilitate tax reporting and reconciliation. In September, the company's UpToDate resource was released in Latin America. That month the company extended its partnership with the American Internal Revenue Service. 2014 marked the 15th year of their collaboration. Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory sold Croner Group to Peninsula Business Services in 2016 and sold Croner-i to Peninsula in 2017

In the United States, Wolters Kluwer's Legal & Regulatory Education (the education division of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.) published casebooks and legal textbooks through its Aspen Publisher's, Inc. marquee. In 2021, Transom Capital Group purchased the Education division for US$88 million,

In June 2022, Wolters Kluwer signed and completed an agreement to acquire Level Programs S.L., a provider of legal practice management software in Spain.

Wolters Kluwer launched new TeamMate+ for internal controls and assurance professionals on 17 July 2025.

The company operates under five divisions as of 2026:

Legal & Regulatory
Tax & Accounting
Health
Financial & Corporate Compliance
Corporate Performance & ESG

Divisions

Wolters Kluwer operates through five global divisions, providing software and services for specialized professional markets.

Health

The Health division provides clinical technology and evidence-based decision support tools for clinicians and healthcare institutions. Major brands include Clinical Decision Support, Medi-Span (drug data and interaction screening), and Lippincott (medical publishing and nursing education). Its products are used by approximately two million clinicians across 180 countries.

Tax & Accounting

This division provides tax, accounting, and audit software to professional firms and corporate tax departments. Its core portfolio includes the CCH product line, featuring CCH Axcess, CCH ProSystem fx, and CCH AnswerConnect. The division serves over 210,000 accounting firms worldwide, including the "Big Four" and the majority of top-tier U.S. firms.

Financial & Corporate Compliance

The Financial & Corporate Compliance (FCC) division provides legal entity compliance, banking product compliance, and risk management solutions. Key brands include CT Corporation (registered agent services), ComplianceOne, and Lien Solutions. The segment serves more than 200,000 businesses, including a majority of Fortune 500 companies and U.S. banks.

Legal & Regulatory

The Legal & Regulatory division offers information, workflow, and compliance solutions for law firms and corporate legal departments. Significant platforms include VitalLaw (formerly Cheetah), Legisway, and the Enterprise Legal Management suite. Its customer base includes approximately 90% of the Am Law 100 firms.

Corporate Performance & ESG

The Corporate Performance & ESG division focuses on risk management, corporate finance, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting software. It includes brands such as Enablon (sustainability software), CCH Tagetik (corporate performance management), and TeamMate (internal audit software).

Sustainability

Wolters Kluwer is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The company received the Bronze Class Sustainability Award 2014 from RobecoSAM. Wolters Kluwer is recognized as one of the "Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World" by Corporate Knights.

Lawsuits

In September 2024, Lucina Uddin, a neuroscience professor at UCLA, sued Wolters Kluwer along with five other academic journal publishers in a proposed class-action lawsuit, alleging that the publishers violated antitrust law by agreeing not to compete against each other for manuscripts and by denying scholars payment for peer review services.