Former Two Harbors Coo Jason Vinar To Lead Rocktop Capital Advisors As Cio

Jason Vinar has joined Rocktop Technologies as chief investment officer, where he will lead Rocktop Capital Advisors, the firm’s capital markets and mortgage servicing rights (MSR) business, the company announced Wednesday.

Vinar moves to Rocktop from Two Harbors Investment Corp., a publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trust (REIT), where he most recently served as chief operating officer. He previously was managing director and head of MSR investments and operations at Two Harbors, and he previously helped build the firm’s MSR business while at its external manager, Pine River Capital Management.

At Rocktop Capital Advisors, Vinar will be responsible for MSR valuation, hedge advisory and trading, and for setting the strategic direction as the platform scales.

Rocktop Capital Advisors, a subsidiary of Rocktop Technologies, has traded more than $2 trillion in mortgage servicing rights since 2016 and delivers more than 750 portfolio valuations annually, according to the company. Its clients include institutional mortgage banks, nonbank servicers, issuers and state housing finance agencies.

Vinar’s hire brings buy-side and operating experience to a business that has historically been advisory and execution driven. For mortgage investors and servicers, the move signals a push by Rocktop to deepen its role across the MSR life cycle — from portfolio analytics and risk management to execution in the secondary market — at a time when MSR values remain sensitive to interest rate volatility and evolving capital and liquidity requirements.

At Two Harbors, Vinar led a $25 million-plus earnings-accretive acquisition and integration of RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing. That deal brought in a 500-plus-person platform that services roughly 1 million loans. He also actively managed the servicing portfolio through purchases, targeted sales and swaps to shape portfolio composition.

Earlier in his career at Pine River Capital Management, Vinar built and scaled the firm’s MSR investment business into a top-10 servicer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. Under his leadership, the portfolio grew to more than $230 billion in unpaid principal balance and $3 billion-plus in market value, supported by a 35-person oversight team.

“Jason has lived on every side of the MSR trade — investor, operator, and executive,” Jason Pinson, founder, president and CEO of Rocktop Technologies, said in a statement. “He has run investment strategy for a conventional MSR book, run the sub-servicing strategy and oversight underneath it, and then acquired an operator to bring operations in-house while expanding the firm’s opportunity set.

“That combination is rare, and it is exactly the seat Rocktop Capital Advisors sits in. Bringing someone of Jason’s caliber into this role is a statement about where we intend to take this business.”

“What drew me to Rocktop is that the analytics and the operating platform sit under one roof,” Vinar said. “Most firms can price an MSR or service the loans behind it. Very few can do both, and fewer still can connect what the data says to what actually happens inside of an operator. My focus is on growing Rocktop Capital Advisors into a business that institutional counterparties rely on across the full life of the asset, not just at the point of trade.”

Vinar’s background is grounded in quantitative finance, including roles developing cross-asset valuation and risk platforms at Ameriprise Financial, as well as mortgage valuation and loss models at Castle Peak Capital Advisors and GMAC ResCap.

He has also served for nearly a decade as a lecturer in the University of Minnesota’s Master of Financial Mathematics program, teaching graduate courses in mortgage-backed securities, derivatives and volatility modeling.

He holds a master’s degree in financial mathematics from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.