A resident of St. Louis, Missouri, James Giacin works as a managing director at a financial services firm in Missouri. Over the past 25 years, James Giacin’s professional career in St. Louis focused on corporate finance and structured finance.

Structured finance is a financial activity that involves bundling bonds, loans, and mortgages to facilitate financial solutions that do not involve free cash. Subsequently, tranches are issued upon which the pooled assets are secured. Structured finance is typically used by large corporations facing complex financial requirements that traditional financial instruments cannot meet.

Structured finance functionally transfers the credit risk from the seller to the buyer of the products. A corporation with complex financial needs pools a group of mortgages that create multiple products categorized into different risk grades. These products are offered to potential investors and lenders, who absorb the risks inherent in the products once they buy the products. Some examples of structured finance are collateralized debt obligations (CDO), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), residential mortgage-back securities (RMBS), and asset-backed securities (ABS).