Digital Risk In The News

Forensic underwriting firm moves to Orlando

Oct 19, 2007
Orlando Business Journal
by Tiffany Beck

Digital Risk LLC, a firm that assesses risk for the financial services industry, is moving its headquarters from Dallas to Orlando and hiring 200 employees locally during the next six months.

The 2-year-old company works mainly with financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Chase Manhattan, which buy mortgage loans in pools, securitize them and offer them as investments on Wall Street.

Digital Risk specializes in "forensic underwriting," which involves assessing the risk associated with these securities and looking for fraud or other issues that could affect the performance of mortgage bank securities, says Peter Kassabov, CEO and managing director of Digital Risk.

The firm's software, which has a patent pending, points out questionable loans, allowing Digital Risk employees to investigate them individually.

The company uses a variety of data to investigate the borrowers, such as utility, employment, credit reports, funeral home and IRS documents. "We're one of the first firms that can cross-reference and access so many data sources," says Kassabov, who founded Connextions Inc. in 1999 and then sold it last year to a major private equity firm.

Kassabov says he's moving the privately owned company's headquarters from Dallas to Orlando because several of its principals already live here. The move started three months ago and will be completed by the end of this month.

Digital Risk's downtown Orlando office has 18,000 square feet at The Plaza on South Orange Avenue, but Kassabov says it will expand to 30,000 square feet there by April to accommodate the new employees.

The company, which also has offices in Dallas and Jacksonville, has a total of 110 employees. By April, it will add 400 workers companywide for jobs with salaries starting at $60,000. Kassabov wants to hire loan underwriters with five to 10 years of experience in the mortgage industry. "We have more demand for our services than we can handle right now," he says.

Kassabov says the subprime meltdown has driven his business. That's because the quality of mortgage application underwriting has suffered the past few years from fraud ranging from identity theft to people lying on loan applications, says Kassabov.

While not familiar with Digital Risk, Sander Read, president of Alexander Read Investments Inc. in Winter Park, says that the subprime market has created a need for such investigative services. "To have firms come in and measure risk in these new products is probably a great idea," he says.

Ray Gilley, president and CEO of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission says, the company's decision "reflects the growing strength of our region's financial service sector and our ability to support growing companies in this sector. We welcome Digital Risk and the high value jobs they add to our economy."