Sean Hundtofte

Founder/CEO

2021 - Current

Financial Consulting and Investment Management

2011 - 2020

Various occasional engagements deploying private capital/private credit and optimizing businesses around data. Advised FinTechs from seed-stage through to series D on capital (credit) raising, new business lines, and business-optimization. More than $1 billion of acquisitions - investments in distressed NPLs and residential mortgage deals. Pricing, negotiating, structuring, financing. Modeling house prices and defaults. Reviewed and provided recommendations on targets in consumer finance sector for strategic M&A.

Adjunct Assistant Professor

2018 - 2020

Real Estate Capital Markets (MBAs and Undergraduates)

Chief Economist, Head of Credit Risk, Head of Acquisitions

2018 - 2020

Member of executive team. Chief Economist: led analysis and optimizations with teams around the firm and data engineers. Drove business around those findings, e.g. pricing experiments. Improved understanding of our loan factory and borrower outcomes to drive business outcomes Head of Credit Risk: working with other groups when new business/products appear on radar. Assessing risk, helping form policy. Head of Acquisitions (~Head of paid growth): optimizing growth and ROI. Set up and grew team of rate-table and media traders, managing portfolio of media/channels/campaigns. Built analytics to shed light on and improve performance. R&D on new channels and strategies. Led, grew, mentored small team. In 8 months, we more than halved CAC and improved expected revenue while growing loan applications 4x. Better is a Series C FinTech firm addressing the home ownership problem (mortgage, realtor, ...).

Financial Economist

2016 - 2018

Finished up research from PhD answering questions in banking and household finance. My typical motivation is a situation where the standard model doesn't fit real-world experience, so for me that meant looking at topics related to financial distress or asset valuations, and figuring out behavioural drivers of financial activity. Examples: estimating impacts of changes in regulatory policy on financial sector and aggregate risk, analysing impacts of one particular facet of Op Risk (money laundering) on US Real Estate Markets, and looking at how household outcomes (e.g. bankruptcy, shopping for loans, adoption of new financial products) vary by behavioural factors. Modeling credit (eg mortgage cashflow) outcomes. I also worked on stress test modeling and implementation.

Analyst (Consumer Finance)

2007 - 2011

Led investments over $600mln in the following: mortgages (sub/non-performing/re-performing, 1st and 2nd liens), equipment leases, credit cards (performing sub-prime, charge-offs), student loans, ABS. Distressed investing/asset-based lending with a focus on consumer finance investments: sourcing, pricing, negotiating, closing, and managing private credit deals from cradle to grave. Managed the residential mortgage business, with book size of approximately $600mln UPB at time of departure. Successful track record. Other: created and led Data Warehouse initiative to build and lever alternative data, monitoring investments and matching to economic details at the micro level.

Associate

2007 - 2007

~Portfolio Management (portfolio construction). Constructed portfolios, risk analysis and risk management, managing risk/return to targets. Managed small team to generate trades and handle beta/benchmark tracking error tradeoffs.

Associate

2005 - 2007

Distressed Private Equity, Special Situations Valued loan pools, MBS/ABS bonds and residuals; advised senior lenders in bankruptcy proceedings of mortgage originator. Performed industry and company research for special situations in Real Estate/Mortgages, Natural Resources and Energy sectors.

Summer Associate

2004 - 2004

Convertible bonds trading desk, Capital structure arbitrage and flow trading. Traded and hedged convertibles. Researched market impact of mandatory convertibles issuance by financials. Partnered with IT team to develop tool to visually communicate risk exposures to desk. Also helped out Investment Banking group with analysis of (mandatory) convertibles and price impacts of issuance.

Associate

2001 - 2003

Fixed income research on/for trading desk in the Government Analytics group. Focus: US Treasuries and their derivatives. Analyzed Treasuries, Agencies and their derivatives. Coding in C/C++, javascript, playing role as developer on pricing models and analytical reports.