I explained to them a simplified answer that I got straight from investopedia: SFG deals mostly with CDOs (collateralized debt obligations). Basically how a CDO works is that it starts with a local bank lending out money (loans) to customers to pay down their home or cars. That local bank takes all these loans and sells them to an investment bank, who restructures the loans into different traunches (with different levels of risk) before reselling them to investors. SFG analyzes the risk associated with these loans.