Fin Tech Startup Infraccess Preps Infrastructure Funding Database

New York City, NY, July 12, 2016 (Newswire.com) - New York-based Infraccess, a fin-tech startup founded by two former Standard & Poor's senior executives, is developing a data service that aims to bring greater transparency and liquidity to the global infrastructure finance market.

There is a current funding crisis in the global infrastructure market. An annual $1 trillion financing gap exists between the world’s infrastructure needs and the amount traditional financing sources are able to provide. Attracting new investors is key to closing this gap. Up until now this has been hampered by a lack of useable data on bankable investment opportunities

"The infraccess platform will finally give infrastructure investment professionals the work flow tools they need to make better informed decisions; provides a global pipeline of bankable infrastructure projects and a valuable repository of project documentation."

Neil Smith, CEO

Infraccess employs artificial intelligence “AI” and proprietary machine learning technology to mine public sources of unstructured information. It automatically extracts, standardizes and updates key data points to create a platform of real time actionable intelligence about current and pending infrastructure projects and their financing. 

CEO Neil Smith says “the infraccess platform will finally give infrastructure investment professionals the work flow tools they need to make better informed decisions; provides a global pipeline of bankable projects and a project document repository. Using data science it also aims to deliver a proprietary “Smart Alpha” predictive indicator of a projects’ potential success.”

Infraccess is principally aimed at pension funds, asset owners and investment managers who want direct exposure to the market but have held back allocating significant amounts of their portfolio’s to infrastructure projects mainly because of a lack of available relevant data.

“Until now, these institutional investors relied on the bankers pitching deals, or having to seek out data themselves from individual government agencies. Even if the information is obtained it can be hard to properly compare different projects directly”. 

“Existing vendor services in this area generally collect the data manually and usually make it available in the form of unstructured information, such as newsletters compiled by journalists and analysts or via difficult to use web based interfaces,” says Infraccess founder Neil Smith. 

Infraccess will offer its data via a front-end web interface on a per user subscription basis. By providing this critical intelligence in one easily accessible work flow tool, Smith says; “Infraccess will empower institutional investors to invest directly in the projects”

“Government contracting agencies are also keenly interested in raising awareness of their projects as a way to attract more and diversified investors and to get better pricing. And some of the construction companies and advisory firms are interested because it gives them a single source for identifying business development opportunities" Smith says.

Smith plans to name a full management team later this year -- including product and commercial executives, plus developers and a chief data officer -- the first of whom is managing director and infrastructure specialist Arthur Simonson, who spent over 20 years at S&P, most recently as managing director of credit ratings for Infrastructure and Latin America. 

Smith started working on Infraccess last year after serving as managing director of S&P Credit Solutions at S&P Capital IQ, prior to which he spent four years as managing director and global product head at Fitch Solutions. He spent 10 plus years at Citigroup in various roles, including investment center head for the bank’s Citibank Alternative Investments division in New York.

“I have been involved in this market for some time ever since being head of the Asset Management Taskforce in Western Australia in the early 1990’s. I have been  thinking about inefficiencies in the infrastructure market for a while, and especially over the last couple of years. For example, at BNY Mellon, I worked on International Custody and Trust, which involved a lot of project financing," Smith says. "Demand for infrastructure financing has continued to grow... but I still see the gaps in the market -- the small number of players, and the need for more transparency."

Smith is currently working with NYC based product development team Sea Salt Ventures on refining a product prototype. He declines to give a specific date for when the service will commercially launch, but says the team plans to begin a testing and validation period with a select group of early-adopter clients in October or November.

Background Corporate Information. Infraccess LLC is a NYC based fin-tech start up, providing the only global, comprehensive and independent Data Information and Analytics Platform for Infrastructure Project Financing, Investing and Advisory services. Infraccess was founded by Neil R Smith and Arthur Simonson.​

Infraccess has developed proprietary AI machine learning systems for the extraction and standardization of publicly available data on a real time basis. 

The Infraccess marketing web site can be found at infraccess.net

Source: infraccess