Versana, a loan platform founded by four of the world's largest banks, announced its launch Wednesday (March 16), saying it wanted to bring \”transparency, efficiency and velocity\” to the $5 trillion syndicated loan market.
Founded by J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citi and Credit Suisse and likely to launcher later in the year, Versana \”will try to reduce the corporate loan market's operational challenges by digitally capturing agent banks' reference data directly from its source on a real-time basis,\” the organization said in news release.
Versana has named Cynthia Sachs, a twenty-five year Wall Street veteran, for everyone since it's CEO. Sachs has spent a lot of her time creating and overseeing loan-related businesses in the banking and tech sectors, employed by companies such as Morgan Stanley, Natixis and Bank of the usa, and previously served as Global Head of Fixed Income Valuations at Bloomberg.
At Bloomberg, Sachs led the launch of BVAL, the firm's evaluated pricing service. Her newest position was as CEO and chief investment officer of Athena Art Finance, Carlyle's specialty finance startup.
\”Versana is backed by some of the biggest players and it is being built by industry veterans with decades of experience working in the borrowed funds ecosystem,\” she said. \”We know first-hand the difficulties that exist today and are enthusiastic about fixing the market's inefficiencies and inherent risks, setting it up for accelerated growth for years to come.\”
Versana says the syndicated loan marketplace is poised for substantial growth, particularly with inflation driving up rates of interest, forcing borrowers to go to floating rate financial products.
\”But the highly fragmented and inefficient nature of the present market ecosystem – settlement times average more than 20 days – often leads to frustration among participants, significant additional costs along with a higher level of operational challenges,\” the company said.
Figures released through the U.S. Bls last week showed that inflation what food was in a 40-year record high – 7.9% -thanks in part to rising prices in food, shelter and gas.
