Looking at 2021 and Beyond: Cementing dv01 as The Data Hub for Lending Markets

When I started dv01 six years ago, it was with the goal to remodel the capital markets’ antiquated data infrastructure. Having spent most of my career trading mortgage bonds, I’ve been particularly driven to fix the systemic transparency issues that were on full display during the 2008 global financial crisis.

Over the years, we’ve made great strides toward our mission of bringing unparalleled transparency and intelligence to every loan: we are a critical data partner in securitization deals; we influence industry-wide reporting standards; we’ve expanded our footprint into mortgages and student loans; total notional on the platform has grown to over $3.4 trillion; and the company has grown to nearly 80 employees.

In order to propel dv01 forward and cement ourselves as the data hub for lending markets, we need to  provide investors unrivaled value. To achieve this, we must capture the agency MBS market.

The agency MBS market trades $65 trillion a year, but for decades data has only been available on a monthly basis, leaving investors in the dark on how performance has evolved throughout the month. Online lenders started to change that in consumer loans with daily loan-level transparency but no such advances have been made in the mortgage market. I believe dv01 can change that.

I’m thrilled to announce dv01’s acquisition of Pragmic Technologies, an early-stage company reimagining the data infrastructure of the agency MBS market. To support our growth, we’ve also secured a $6M series B3 funding led by Pivot Investment Partners and joined by new strategic investor, AGNC Ventures, an affiliate of AGNC Investment Corp, a leading residential mortgage REIT with over $97 billion in assets.

Pragmic is led by Charlie Oshman and Memo Sanchez, co-founders of Reonomy, the leading commercial real estate property intelligence platform. CRE is one of the largest asset classes in the U.S. without required performance reporting, and Reonomy has grown to be the market leader, serving thousands of clients. While Charlie and Memo have an impressive track record building proprietary technology, it was our shared common goal—to solve the capital markets’ data fragmentation problem—that made combining forces perfect sense.

With the addition of Pragmic, dv01 will develop a novel data infrastructure that resolves the traditionally slow and opaque reporting processes within the agency MBS sector. Our platform will empower investors with granular intra-month performance insights to help them optimize their portfolio management and hedging processes; strategic investment decision-making will no longer be based on stale information.

Additionally, we’ll combine resources to provide the first true ESG data offering for structured products. Despite the market for data-driven ESG investments surpassing $40 trillion in 2020, little progress has been made in developing ESG standards for structured products. In order to effectively promote sustainable investing, investors must harness critical loan-level data—a dv01 specialty.

Our first acquisition is a monumental milestone, and we are pumped about our ambitious product road map, the strong growth trajectory, and the challenges we’ll overcome!

You can read the official announcement here, and if you’re interested in joining our mission of bringing unparalleled transparency and intelligence to every loan, let us know!

- Perry