Drew Peterson, counsel in the Finance group, talks about how a Fintech startup improves transparency in peer-to-peer lending and is named to the Forbes Fintech 50.
What role do trustees play in Fintech?
Whereas some new startups tend to approach Fintech from a tech perspective, traditional trustees have been involved in the securitization industry since its inception and approach Fintech primarily from a finance perspective. Although Fintech has become a hot term relatively recently, one could say that trustees have embraced Fintech since day one. With much of trustees’ duties requiring them to aggregate vast amounts of data and produce standardized reports to pair with payments, trustees have had to create the technology necessary to produce the information investors want to see and track the data accurately. As new players come into the securitization industry, trustees will need to be aware of new technology being offered and consider how to best incorporate it into the services they provide. Investors and issuers alike have come to embrace the evolving ability of Fintech and expect everyone, including trustees, to be on the same page, providing the data requested by investors in useable and manageable ways.
What type of advising/counsel do you provide for dv01?
dv01 approached me for securitization-specific legal counsel after it had developed the technological infrastructure necessary to map the loan information and provide a user interface. After developing its product, it was time to put the process into action. I advised dv01 on how to enter the securitization arena, structure its product to fit within the existing rubric and negotiate the necessary contracts to provide legal structure for the duties and responsibilities dv01 offers. I have continued to represent dv01 as we have taken its role of loan data agent and applied it to multiple securitizations with a number of different originators and investors.
What landed dv01 in the Forbes Fintech 50 list?
At the heart of it, dv01 saw a need and fulfills it well. One of the biggest lessons of the recession was the need to have better transparency of the collateral underlying securitized pools of loans. dv01 helps answer this key question asked by investors: how are the individual loans in my portfolio actually performing, not just on the whole or in the aggregate, but how is each individual loan performing? Because of their understanding of the complexity of loan performance reporting, their appreciation and responsiveness to the evolving demands of investors, and their tech savvy to bridge the gap, dv01’s services have proven useful and are increasingly sought after as a solution to the transparency issue.
Where does dv01 fit in the Fintech marketplace?
dv01 is a Fintech company that enables investors to track loan performance of peer-to-peer loans and their related securitizations from multiple originators in real time and down to the loan level through their user-friendly, customizable web portal. The team at dv01 brings together a unique combination of banking experience and tech savvy that pairs well with their desire to provide complex data in a customizable format useful to investors. It fits well not just in the Fintech marketplace, but also in the broader economic marketplace, providing their services to better enable highly requested transparency in peer-to-peer lending and other areas of mortgage and consumer lending.