Wayne Potters, a former managing director for Société Générale, has joined Lev, a New York-based commercial real estate financing platform, as managing director and head of commercial mortgage-backed securities.
Potters will launch a CMBS landing platform and assist Lev in its business of digitizing and streamlining commercial real estate transactions. His role will focus on digital and automated commercial real estate loan securitizations.
"Wayne's experience encompasses working with some of the most prolific banks and borrowers in the industry,” said Yaakov Zar, Lev’s founder and chief executive officer. He added, “with his background having launched various CMBS businesses and his knowledge of tech's impact across banking, we're poised to launch a lending experience and securitization product not currently offered by anyone else in the market."
Potters has launched and headed several commercial mortgage-backed securities businesses at traditional banks, including Société Générale, where he was a managing director and head of commercial mortgage. He was also a managing director and head of commercial real estate at RBS, according to Potters’ LinkedIn profile. He had also been a director of large loan structuring, syndication and rating agency manager at Merrill Lynch. There, he was a founding member of its loan commercial mortgage group, and was responsible for sizing, structuring and securitizing all commercial mortgage loans that the large loan group originated.
In a related development, Lev announced a partnership with AppFolio Investment Management, a provider of cloud-based solutions for real estate investment managers. The endeavor will enable AppFolio customers to obtain real-time commercial real estate financing quotes on the Lev API.
The aim is that Lev’s proprietary analysis and pricing engine will be available on the AppFolio dashboard, allowing the latter’s customers to review customized financing options, according to a statement from Lev.
