OREANDA-NEWS. August 04, 2015. Fitch Ratings affirms the commercial real estate special servicer rating of Rialto Capital Advisors, LLC (RCA) at 'CSS2'.

The special servicer rating reflects RCA's experienced management team, robust asset management capabilities, and its ongoing commitment to technology and improving compliance management.

RCA continues to evolve from a non-performing loan asset manager to a more diversified special servicing portfolio that includes 49 CMBS conduit transactions at March 31, 2015. RCA continues to invest in its proprietary special servicing and asset management technology, RCAMS, which includes a compliance module for ensuring that CMBS requirements are accomplished timely. The compliance function was built out in 2014 with the hiring of a compliance manager whose approval is required for CMBS asset resolutions.

RCA is the operating entity of Rialto Capital Management (Rialto) which was founded in 2007 as a real estate investment and asset management company focused on distressed real estate assets. Rialto is the sponsor of and an investor in four private equity funds that target opportunistic investments in distressed loans and real estate and subordinate bonds in CMBS 2.0 transactions and mezzanine loans. The company also maintains a commercial real estate loan origination business to originate and securitize non-recourse CRE loans.

As of March 31, 2015, RCA was named special servicer on 3,356 CMBS loans totaling \\$53.7 billion in 49 transactions. As of the same date, RCA was actively working out 27 defaulted CMBS loans totaling \\$152.8 million and six real estate owned (REO) assets with an unpaid principal balance (UPB) of \\$6 million. RCA is also named special servicer for 3,866 non-CMBS loans totaling \\$1.7 billion UPB and was actively working out 2,439 of the loans with a UPB of \\$1.3 billion, and 1,427 REO with a UPB of \\$464.8 million.

The servicer rating is based on the methodology described in Fitch's reports 'U.S. Commercial Mortgage Servicer Rating Criteria,' dated Feb. 14, 2014, and 'Rating Criteria for Structured Finance Servicers' dated April 23, 2015, available on Fitch's web site www.fitchratings.com.