Versana Launches Syndicated Loan Platform

Versana has launched an industry-backed syndicated loan platform.

By digitally capturing agent banks’ deal data on a real-time basis, this centralized solution connects banks, institutional lenders and their service providers and provides transparency, efficiency and velocity, Versana said in the Tuesday (Dec. 13) press release.

“Versana is the long-awaited digital data and technology solution that the syndicated loan market has so greatly needed,” Versana founding CEO and board member Cynthia Sachs said in the release. “We are thrilled to launch this platform with the innovative and strategic support of our founding investors for a better — and ultimately bigger — corporate credit market.”

The founding investors include J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citi and Credit Suisse. All four founding banks are now Versana subscribers, according to the press release.

These investors and their loan syndications and debt capital markets divisions created Versana to tackle the U.S. leveraged loan market’s operational inefficiencies and technological fragmentation, the release said.

Versana centralized corporate loan data flowing from leading administrative agent banks’ books and records, facilitates straight-through processing and enables participants to move to a self-service data and technology platform fit for future innovation, per the release.

“This exciting effort will lead the digital transformation of the syndicated loan market,” J.P. Morgan Head of Debt Capital Markets Operations & Merchant Bank Policy Joseph Ferraiolo said in the release. “Moving to a digitized format will further enable market participants to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and lenders will have ease of receiving their loan holdings data to enable faster decision making to recycle and grow liquidity in the market.”

The Versana platform is now connected and live with real-time loan data. It is initially focused on the U.S. institutional market — including Term Loan As and Bs — and its product offerings are to be enhanced as additional agent banks, lenders and service providers join, according to the press release.

“The Versana platform has been built by a team of veteran banking and technology professionals with decades of experience working in the loan ecosystem,” Versana Chief Technology Officer David Kamp said in the release. “Knowing firsthand the challenges faced by participants in this space, we have built a robust and secure foundation to modernize the market by leveraging smart contracts and distributed-compute and event-processing engines.”

When announcing its plans to launch the platform, Versana said March 16 that the syndicated loan market is poised for substantial growth, especially with inflation driving up interest rates, forcing borrowers to turn to floating rate financial products.