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Mortgage Investment Veterans Launch RMBS Data Company

A team of mortgage finance and investment management veterans have announced the official launch of a new company, BlackBox Logic LLC. BlackBoxprovides investors, broker/dealers, and researchers with a[IMAGE]database of loan-level collateral underlying non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

BlackBox Logic also announced the availability of its loan-level data aggregation service, called BBx Data, which covers the jumbo-A, subprime, and Alt-A mortgage markets. It includes more than 7,200 RMBS, 21 million loans, and nearly 600 million remittance records, dating back to 1999.

BlackBox Logic is headquartered in Denver, with offices in New York and Bethesda, Maryland. The company is majority-owned by Braddock Holdings Co., the private equity affiliate of Denver-based Braddock Financial Corp., an SEC-registered investment advisor.

“We started the company because the Braddock Financial trading desk demanded a better RMBS loan-level database than what the market was offering,” explained Wyck Brown, director of marketing and new business development for BlackBox. “Our team consists of structured finance professionals, analysts, traders, and data experts. Offering timely, high-quality loan-level data is our singular focus.”

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The BlackBox Logic management team has more than 50 years of experience in designing, building, and managing information technology systems for the securitized mortgage market. In addition to Brown, the team is led by Larry Barnett, CEO; Bill Pugh, chief technology officer; Marty Schwartz, lead data modeler ""all three of which have had lengthy tenures with Fannie Mae"" as well as Dmitri Raskes, director of e-commerce solutions.

BlackBox Logic was initially founded in 2007, and this team spent more than two years designing and testing a beta version of BBx Data with RMBS researchers, investors, and broker/dealers before its official launch.

“I believe BlackBox Logic offers the most comprehensive, accurate, granular, and timely data on non-agency mortgage loans and securities today,” said Michael Youngblood, co-founder and principal of asset management firm Five Bridges Advisors LLC, whose team has evaluated a beta version of BBx Data.

Youngblood says BlackBox Logic has spent the time to create fields that cleanse and filter the raw source data, which enhances his company’s use of the information for better analysis.

According to BlackBox, by standardizing formats and populating data gaps, BBx Data’s cleansed data provides, on average, a 37 percent improvement on important loan characteristics when compared to unformatted, raw data. BBx Data users have the option of receiving both cleansed and raw data sets.

The company also explained that BBx Data utilizes a unique dedicated loan modification processing engine to provide users with coverage of current and retrospective modifications ""“ something BlackBox calls a “critical capability” given the current volume and pace of modification activity. Using proprietary logic, the BBx Data production team says it was able to identify more than 60,000 loan modifications not identified by servicers or reported by trustees.

About Author: Carrie Bay

Carrie Bay is a freelance writer for DS News and its sister publication MReport. She served as online editor for DSNews.com from 2008 through 2011. Prior to joining DS News and the Five Star organization, she managed public relations, marketing, and media relations initiatives for several B2B companies in the financial services, technology, and telecommunications industries. She also wrote for retail and nonprofit organizations upon graduating from Texas A&M University with degrees in journalism and English.
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