The beginning of an idea

Issuance for CDOs is booming and the market was seeing an increase in the number of new asset managers, all with the same request – access to software to run their portfolios. Establishing ourselves in London under the brand name StructureIt, we got together a small team and started work on satisfying this need leveraging the emergent (at the time) SaaS delivery model whilst using consultancy as a means of funding.

Born in a storm

After two years of hard work, we launched a market first SaaS CDO administration platform to the asset management segment of the structured product market. Unfortunately the global financial crisis arrived at the same time – dark days as we saw our market collapse along with the rest of the financial world.

Survived the financial crisis

As the global economy started to emerge from the crisis, a renewed industry focus on system and process gave us an opportunity to extend the consulting services that we had relied on for survival from company formation into a growth area.

Building a global presence

Having been firmly based in London, we started to expand the company to include offices in Johannesburg (South Africa), Paraparaumu (New Zealand), Thailand and Mauritius.

Launch of our first data products

Identifying a disconnect in the flow of information from source providers to investors, we launched Report Stream, a file and document aggregator for the structured products markets – one place for all your documents and reports, regardless of where they came from.

Alongside this, clients were asking for access to clean CMBS IRP data, resulting in the launch of our CMBS IRP product, the market standard for Freddie Mac data alongside full coverage of the broader deal universe. Mauritius became our data excellence tech hub which continues to facilitate our 24 hour coverage.

Ensuring compliance with global standards

Recognising the need to meet our clients’ compliance and governance requirements, we undertook and achieved SOC II compliance, giving our current and future clients the comfort they needed – we take this very seriously.

Completing our global presence

With a keen focus on the US structured products and private assets market, we established a physical presence in New York (USA) to better support our US client base. We also included Cape Town (South Africa) in our network of offices.

Expanding our products

Taking a deeper look at the continued disconnect between parties and data on a deal, we launched Connect, a collaboration tool aimed at facilitating the smooth sharing of information to all parties on a deal.

We extended our data product suite with the launch of the CLO Trustee data feed which is focused on bringing the fastest and highest quality data in the market.

The start of DealX

We believed that delivering product and consultancy to the same market under the same brand was potentially confusing to our clients and ourselves, as well as diluting focus. In order for each to flourish, separating our core offerings into separate brands and leadership would satisfy not just this, but also our desire for a strategic investor who could help us establish our product offering.

With this in mind, we kept consulting under the StructureIt brand with a dedicated leadership group and separated out the products business into a new brand, DealX with the original founder leadership. At the end of the year, we closed a Series A investment round with Morningstar Credit and accomplished both objectives we set ourselves at the start of the year.

DealX and Morningstar Credit: A unified offering

In 2022, we worked closely with our strategic investor, Morningstar Credit. It became increasingly clearer to us that our highly complimentary strengths were best delivered to the market via a single offering. At the start of 2023, our collective product and data teams worked closely with market participants to better understand their needs leading to the launch of Morningstar Credit Analytics on the 9th of June that same year. The platform offers the best of our fast and clean IRP data which has been enhanced with Morningstar Credits opinion, analysis and loss forecasts all delivered in a highly intuitive application. Our customers can now get what they want, how they want it, and importantly, faster than anyone else in the market.