Our approach
Our suite of solutions are designed to make material difference to banks’ abilities to originate and underwrite loans while remaining within their risk management framework. Through strategic partnerships, we help commercial banks generate operational efficiencies, support in driving revenue growth and effectively manage credit risk.
Support We Offer
- Corporate and Commercial Lending
With over 18 years of experience in delivering research and analytics services, Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) has built a robust and sustainable ecosystem of people, process and technology. Acuity has strong credentials within the corporate and commercial banking space, supporting banks across the lending value chain (KYC, origination, underwriting, monitoring and operations), helping them centralise, standardise and digitise processes.
With digitisation initiatives specially designed to automate parts of the credit analysis function, coupled with the flexibility to choose from different engagement models, we enable financial institutions scale their lending operations while remaining client and risk-focused. As business/operational uncertainty increases, Acuity’s lending service offerings can help banks simplify lending, improve speed to market and make better credit decisions.
- Consumer Mortgage Process Outsourcing
With over 18 years of experience in delivering research and analytics services, Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) has strong credentials within the consumer and commercial banking space. Our consumer mortgage process outsourcing services help banks optimise their consumer mortgage value chain (origination, processing, underwriting, closing and post-closing), by centralizing, standardizing and digitalizing mortgage processes.
We partner with our clients to drive revenue, implement global best practices and transform their operating models. Our consumer mortgage service offerings can help banks improve speed to market, increase customer-facing time, manage higher volumes and utilize flexible staffing for one-time projects or spikes in work volumes.
- Commercial Real Estate
Acuity Knowledge Partners has proven capability in assisting Commercial Real Estate (CRE) lenders, brokers, borrowers and commercial banks achieve operational efficiency. Acuity delivers customised solutions across the CRE lending value chain (pre-screening, underwriting, portfolio monitoring and other post-closing activities). We provide scalable delivery solutions for our clients’ increasing requirements as a result of changes in the risk environment, such as LIBOR transitioning, loan risk rating and platform migration including process transformation.
We partner with our clients to drive revenue, implement global best practices and transform their operating models. Our subject matter experts have experience across product types, such as CMBS, Agency, FHA, Construction and Bridge Lending. Our CRE lending service offerings can help banks improve speed-to-market, increase customer-facing time and manage higher volumes.
- Asset-based Lending Outsourcing
With over 18 years of experience in delivering credit research and analytics services, Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) has built robust expertise in Asset based lending (ABL) services. We have strong credentials in ABL outsourcing space including ABL software transition support, across the credit analysis value chain, helping banks to centralise, standardise and digitise processes.
With the values of underlying collateral changing constantly, we understand that ABL portfolio monitoring, although time-consuming, is extremely important. We have domain expertise in independently monitoring ABL portfolios in a timely and structured manner. Our domain experts aim to identify early-warning triggers and discrepancies in borrowing bases and collateral reporting to minimise exposures at risk.
- Leveraged Lending
We are the market leader in outsourcing support to leveraged lending teams , offering a full suite of services from deal origination to execution and monitoring. Our leveraged lending teams support global and regional commercial and investment banks including 3 of the top 6 leveraged loan issuers in the US market.
Our domain experts have a thorough understanding of and experience in monitoring large leveraged lending portfolios across geographies and sectors. We help banks set up robust monitoring and control functions to proactively assess credit risk while generating insights for making informed credit decisions. The feedback we have received so far is testament to our expertise and commitment to helping our clients streamline credit analysis processes, standardise and improve monitoring, increase client-facing time and improve time to market for renewals, extensions and new loan underwriting.
- Lending Operations
The commercial lending landscape is fast evolving. Demand for quicker decisions in lending, increasing competition and pressure to reduce the cost-to-serve ratio have led global financial institutions not only to transform their business, but also to run lean and highly efficient operations through a scalable and centralised delivery model.
At Acuity, we offer bespoke, best-in-class solutions by fully understanding business needs. We help financial institutions centralise, standardise and optimise loan and treasury operations so they can formulate high-quality business operations frameworks and increase overall speed to market.
- Data Science
Global technology megatrends, regulatory developments, the competitive landscape and the rise of alternative data have been driving a paradigm shift in the capital markets ecosystem. Demand to find new avenues of alpha creation powered by data science techniques is at unprecedented levels. Acuity has been providing highly bespoke quantitative and technology-powered solutions to our buy-side and sell-side clients since 2005. To address growing demand in recent years, we launched a dedicated data science practice early in 2019 to provide unique and contextual insights based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
- Structured Finance Services
Acuity Knowledge Partners works with specialised structured finance companies and securitisation desks at leading investment banks and institutional investors globally, supporting their key business functions such as asset finance, structuring, portfolio management, research, trading, risk analytics and reporting. Our analysts work as a natural extension of client teams, providing support on critical tasks such as the following:
Loan tape cracking
Bespoke cash flow/credit modelling
Sourcing, organising and mining market data, and tracking custom metrics
Sell-side/buy-side research and publication
Valuation, stress testing and scenario analysis
Custom database/technology and automation solutions
We take pride in our analyst pool with their multi-asset-class experience across functions in the securitisation space. Our deep domain understanding and tool-agnostic approach, coupled with in-house custom technology offerings, enable us to provide highly relevant, efficient and scalable solutions that seamlessly integrate with existing client systems and processes.
- Presales and Marketing Support for Commercial Banks
Our suite of solutions is designed to make a material difference to a bank’s ability to remain ahead of the curve in a very competitive landscape. Through strategic partnerships, we help commercial banks generate operational efficiencies, focus on revenue growth and manage risk effectively.
With more than a decade of experience in front-office and operations support, we partner with banks to offer support in proposal management and traditional and digital marketing tasks to enhance their presales and marketing functions.
The following are some of the product lines we provide support for:
- Retail Lending
With over 18 years of experience in delivering research and analytics services, Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) has strong credentials within the consumer and commercial banking space. Our retail lending solutions help banks optimize their retail banking value chain (origination, processing, underwriting, closing and post-closing), by centralizing, standardizing and digitalizing processes.
We partner with our clients to drive revenue, implement global best practices and transform their operating models. Our retail lending solutions can help banks improve speed to market, increase customer-facing time, manage higher volumes and utilize flexible staffing for one-time projects or spikes in work volumes.
Support we offer
What we have delivered annually
10,000+
risk ratings
25,000+
credit reviews
125,000+
covenants
200,000+
financial spreads
How we are different
Market leadership in the credit space, deep domain insights, and multi-sector expertise
Cross-functional specialists with backgrounds in risk, mathematics, economics and programming
Fully customized solutions for individual functions at client firms, with a high level of scalability and flexibility
Best-positioned to offer support across financing and capital markets activities
Enhanced delivery solutions using high-powered, technology integrated tools for data and reporting needs
What we have done
Our perspective on Commercial and Regional Banks
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Meet our experts
Subhrojyoti Mandal
Director, Commercial Lending Services
Subhro has been with Acuity Knowledge Partners for over 8 years. He has 15+ years of extensive experience in credit analysis in the lending, counterparty and credit research domain. Subhro manages transition of new clients encompassing the credit analysis function across different lending lines of business. He has extensive work experience in banking products, process and systems across the lending value chain for global as well as regional corporate and commercial banks. He holds a Master of Commerce degree from Calcutta University.
Rajul Sood
Senior Director, Commercial Lending Services
Rajul heads the commercial lending practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners and has been with the firm for over 15 years. She is responsible for strategic planning, delivery oversight and management, quality assurance and supporting the innovation and technology initiatives in Lending. Rajul has extensive experience in investment banking analytics and commercial lending research services. Apart from banks, the teams she oversees also have in-depth experience in working across different lending products, processes and systems for Fortune 100 companies, SMEs and real-estate businesses. She holds a Master of Finance and Control, and a Bachelor of Commerce from Delhi University.
Pedro Armstrong
Co-Head of Business Development in North America
Pedro Armstrong is a Managing Director at Acuity Knowledge Partners and leads business development efforts in the Americas for the Corporate and Commercial Banking, Buy-side, and Sell-side segments. He is responsible for managing key client engagements and works in partnership with capital market firms to provide customized solutions across research and analytics support, origination and lending support, and marketing and compliance support. He has been with the organization for 12 years, serving in various roles across Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, and now the US. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, he was a Central Bank Regulator at the Central Bank of Barbados. Pedro, who is a British Chevening Scholar, holds a Master’s degree (honors) in Banking and International Finance from Cass Business School, City University, London.
Balaji Ramakrishnan
Senior Director, EMEA Sales Head - Banking and Asset Management
Balaji Ramakrishnan leads Europe and Middle East business development for Acuity. Having spent his formative years in core banking technology operations, he brings a deep understanding of credit processes and the ability to make analytics-driven decisions. He works closely with senior client stakeholders as a trusted partner, shaping the business case for scaled efficiencies through centralisation, standardisation and intelligent automation within Commercial Lending and Asset Management verticals.
Balaji has established long-term partnerships with banks, asset managers and insurance firms across a number of front and middle office transformation initiatives over the past 20 years. Prior to Acuity, he worked at Accenture and Oracle, serving European financial services clients. He holds an MBA from the London Business School.
Marie Filotti
Director, APAC Business Development
Marie Filotti heads APAC Business Development at Acuity Knowledge Partners and is based in Hong Kong. She joined the firm in 2018 after 13 years in Investment Banking and Capital Markets, mainly at Nomura (previously Lehman Brothers), and also worked on the corporate side, having run Investor Relations at a China-based ASX-listed gas company. She uses her experience in the industry to advise our clients on best practices in implementation of engagements across all sectors. Marie holds a BA from Yale University and a Masters in Finance from Sciences-Po Paris.
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