Team
After working together for over a decade, in 2024 we decided to embark on a new adventure and created our own company — QML Solutions. Among the three of us, we’ve spent 50+ years in quantitative credit and equity research: building models, explaining them to investors, and writing strategy research notes. QML Solutions is our way of sharing our quantitative, data-driven insights into credit and equity markets. We are publishing those insights straight to Substack: no paywall, no hype. Just smart, independent research that cuts through the noise and hopefully gives you something useful — whether you’re managing money, building models, or just following markets with curiosity. We believe quant research can be both rigorous and accessible, and we’d love to hear what you want to see more of. Soon, we’ll be adding interactive AI tools that make it easier to explore credit risk data — company-level metrics, aggregates, and peer comparisons. And if you have a project or idea you need help with, we’re also open to bespoke consulting work.
Joey Bortfeld
Joey spent over 20 years at CreditSights, an independent credit research firm that was acquired by Fitch Group in 2021. At CreditSights, he worked in both the quantitative risk modeling and strategy teams. His areas of quantitative research have spanned company default risk estimation, systemic risk models and factor modeling in both equity and credit. Joey completed his undergraduate education at New York University with majors in Economics and Political Science and a minor in Mathematics. He completed the Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF) and obtained a Master’s in Machine Learning from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Kai Gilkes, Ph.D.
Kai spent over 15 years at CreditSights, where he managed the quantitative team responsible for the development of credit risk tools and models for global fixed income markets. He joined the firm after spending two years at DBRS, where he ran a team responsible for the development of quantitative tools for structured credit transactions. Prior to that, he spent eight years at Standard & Poor’s, where he built a quantitative team to support the European and US structured finance businesses. Kai received a BSc in Physics & Computing from The University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) and then went on to complete a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. Prior to working in finance, Kai held a research fellowship in Physics at Cambridge University, and lectured in Physics at the University of East Anglia.
Anneli Lefranc-Gilkes
Anneli spent over nine years at CreditSights, where she developed quantitative models in several areas, including corporate credit scoring, corporate default research and bond distress modelling. Prior to joining CreditSights, Anneli was a quantitative analyst with Corporate Insight’s consulting group, where she developed analytic tools to advise large brokerages. Anneli completed a BA in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Florida with a focus in Econometrics, and received a Master’s in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a focus in Machine Learning and Interactive Intelligence.
Advisors
Reena V. Mithal, Ph.D.
Reena has spent nearly three decades working in global financial markets, spanning multiple geographies, credit cycles, and asset classes. Over the last ten years, she has focused on investing in early stage companies in India and the US, in the areas of skill development, financial inclusion, sustainability and healthcare. Reena has worked closely with entrepreneurs on impact metrics and sustainability objectives, and in her capacity as both an investor and board member, advised management teams on capital structure optimization, working capital management and business development.
In addition to her diverse investment experience, Reena successfully leveraged her technical expertise as a member of the founding team and Board of Directors at CreditSights Inc, a global credit research company established in 2000 and subsequently acquired by Fitch Ratings. She managed a state-of-the-art business in credit analytics, in addition to providing strategic guidance on portfolio construction, risk monitoring and management to global institutional clients. She has held senior roles at Putnam Investments, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers where she specialized in assessing value in sovereign, bank, and corporate credit assets across global emerging markets
Reena has been a frequent speaker at impact investment forums and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia Business School. She was Chairperson, Board of Collegiate Charter Schools in New York and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings India. Reena has a PhD in Finance from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and a MALD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She also has an MA in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a BA from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.