Industry Vets Launch Mortgage Due Diligence Firm

Two credit risk and securities surveillance veterans said Thursday they’d launched a new venture, Allon Financial, to provide third-party due diligence services to whole loan and mortgage bond investors. The Denver-based company takes the name of its founder, Sue Allon, who founded credit risk management specialist The Murrayhill Company in the 1990s. To kick-start the new venture, Allon said that her company had acquired Edison Mortgage Decisioning Solutions, a provider of due diligence and data and analytics reporting. Edison’s assets, including its staff of experienced mortgage analysts and its proprietary due diligence technology, known as ICE, will become part of Allon Financial’s service delivery model. “The events of the past year have shown the catastrophic consequences of a fundamentally flawed mortgage due diligence model, which must be re-invented to bring back confidence and liquidity to the market,” Allon said. “Due diligence must evolve from a report to support a loan purchaser’s pricing decision to a disclosure document on which investors and others can rely.” Her company will focus on seasoned performing and non-performing loan reviews and quality control for agency delivery. Former Murrayhill executive Daniel Gallery will join Allon Financial as president, according to a company statement. The launch of the new venture comes with some interesting history: Murrayhill merged with Clayton Services, Inc. to create what is known today as Clayton Holdings, Inc. in April of 2005 — and it’s worth noting that Clayton itself is also in the third-party due diligence business these days as well, so in some ways Allon will be competing against the company she helped start. Allon — who at the time was better known as Sue Ellis, her maiden name — also sat on the board of directors at Clayton after the merger of the two companies was complete. For more information, visit http://www.allonfinancial.com.