Brian Weinstein is Managing Partner at Blue Elephant Capital Management. Previously, Brian was a portfolio manager at BlackRock, overseeing $300 billion in assets across short duration, financial institutions and multi-sector fixed income portfolio. 

Blue Elephant is at the forefront of the newly evolving structural opportunities made possible by the intersection of technology and finance. The asset manager is among the first to offer investors institutional quality access to the yields of the developing platform lending market. Brian joined Tradestreaming to talk about the firm’s investment strategy and where he’s looking to uncover reasonable yields on a risk-return basis.

What is Blue Elephant? Are you looking at a global investment universe? 

Blue Elephant Capital’s Brian Weinstein

Blue Elephant Capital was founded by 3 former Wall Street professionals – 2 from traditional banks and 1 from the asset management industry. Together, we watched the banks get heavily regulated at the same time that the Fed dropped interest rates to zero, inflating asset values globally. We left out respective jobs with the idea that there were going to be many opportunities that emerged in this type of environment.

The first place caught our attention was the “peer-to-peer” or “marketplace” lending industry, where the technology is changing the way borrowers and lenders interact. We’ve started a fund that invests directly in loans originated by these non-bank lenders. With our capital markets background, we are able to focus in on where the best risk adjusted returns will be based on our economic outlook.

Currently, we are investing in prime US secured and unsecured consumer debt, secured US small business debt, and New Zealand unsecured consumer debt. We continue to look at opportunities globally.

You have a traditional portfolio MGMT background. What a propelled you to address such a young space in platform lending?