Platinum Data Solutions, a provider of collateral valuation and risk assessment technologies, has announced the hire of Craig Zielazny as the company’s senior vice president of valuation analytics.
Zielazny is charged with building the company’s valuation analytics channel, which includes 18 non-proprietary automated valuation models (AVMs), and OptiVal, an AVM suitability testing technology. He is the fifth addition to Platinum’s executive management team in the past 18 months.
“One of our vendors is providing over 1 billion AVMs each month and, according to our estimations, lenders and servicers are using well over 100 million of those,” said Phil Huff, chief executive officer of Platinum Data. “Most have no idea how much those AVMs impact their bottom lines. Shrinking margins are an ongoing challenge for most companies. Many don’t realize that the right AVM or cascade can make a huge difference in profitability, revenue and cash flow. This is a several hundred million dollar marketplace with a lot of untapped opportunities, and Craig is a big part of Platinum’s plans to capitalize on them.”
Zielazny, who has over 13 years of experience in mortgage industry data and analytics, is currently enhancing the company’s valuation analytics offerings and seeking opportunities to expand Platinum’s product line within this channel. He has experience in developing and implementing methodologies that help lenders and servicers select the most suitable AVM or cascade for a particular property or group of properties.
Zielazny has held executive positions at numerous organizations, including AV Metrics, Equifax and Huntington National Bank, where he has overseen and directed data and analytics divisions, developed models for testing and validating AVMs, managed products from concept to roll out and developed and adapted technologies to fulfill industry needs. He led the growth of two different analytics products from $100,000 to over $1 million in revenue in less than a year. He developed a proprietary method for evaluating the correlation of AVM confidence scores to accuracy and also architected, developed and implemented the AVM program at a top 20 lender.
Platinum Data has signed over 60 new client companies since the beginning of 2012. Each of the five executives the company has hired over the past 18 months plays a specific role in Platinum’s plans to further increase revenue, grow its repeat customer base, extend market share and expand its product offerings.