When Vercera.com ends its beta testing and launches its full-scale Web site in mid-January, it will be the first to bring buyers and sellers together in one place to analyze and sell trade receivables at a lower cost.
"I think one of the things we have in our target is to really create and help move the receivables market along - kind of an evolutionary process - and follow markets like mortgages and credit cards to really help them along the path to securitization," said Rob Comizio, chief executive officer and co-founder of Vercera.
Vercera provides analytical, information and management tools for all types of commercial receivables, ranging from distressed to current. Sellers can use these tools to run a portfolio analysis, while buyers get an easy access to deal flow with low customer acquisition costs.
"The goal really is to bring these two together and really leverage the Internet to make a receivables management industry that tends to be very segmented and inefficient much more efficient and much more user-friendly for all the people that are involved," Comizio said.
Unlike other Internet-based trading platforms such as Pedestal Inc. or Ultraprise.com, Vercera's platform provides pre-securitization services, with buyers using the deal flow provided by the sellers to put together a multiseller conduit "and really do it in a much more cost-effective manner," Comizio said.
For the platform, Vercera has partnered with software companies VerticalNet Solutions and Plumtree Software to help create a platform that serves the needs of its customers. In the future, Comizio stated that he hopes U.S. companies will be able to use Vercera to make sales overseas without taking on the additional credit responsibilities.
Prior to co-founding Vercera, Comizio served as a mortgage-backed securities trader at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as well as a director of high-yield trading at Merrill Lynch & Co. Edmund Gaffney, who also co-founded the company, served as manager of corporate development of AmeriGas Propane LP.
