When banks need to unload poorly performing loans or trim the number of commercial real-estate loans before an acquisition, they turn to The Debt Exchange, also known as DebtX. The Boston-based company provides a marketplace for financial institutions that want to sell loans and investors looking to buy them. Think of them as eBay for debt. Kingsley Greenland, the company’s chief executive, recently spoke to reporter Deirdre Fernandes about his start in the business, what it was like to be one of the few financial companies expanding during the recession, and how the firm is adjusting to the post-crisis market.

1Greenland isn’t the shiny new loans kind of guy. He’s been steeped in what happens when loans to build office towers and buy homes go bad. He got a crash course on the world of bad debt while working for Bank of New England, whose failure in 1991 brought an end to the “Massachusetts Miracle’’ and a time of economic growth. Finding investors to buy the bank’s loans was a much more complicated process then, he said. The loans had to be sold in bulk and at bargain rates for investors to trek to Boston to review the documents and determine if they wanted them.

“We would put all the files in the room and invite people to come look through the files,’’ he said.

2That experience inspired DebtX, a technology-based market for these loans, with four of the company’s five founders former Bank of New England employees, Greenland said. The company, which was founded in 2000, made its mark during the financial crisis, bringing buyers from around the world to quickly look at loan documents online and decide whether they were interested in buying the assets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. had a contract with DebtX to sell troubled assets and the Boston-based company grew to about 160 employees during the crisis. It has since settled down to about 95 employees.

“We provided liquidity,’’ Greenland said of his and other similar companies. “It creates a healthier bank and a healthier economy. . . . One of the reasons Bank of New England failed was there was no liquidity in the marketplace.’’

3Before the investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed in 2008, it called on DebtX to help it sell off some of its residential loan portfolio, Greenland said. At the time, Greenland said he didn’t realize that it was a harbinger of the financial crisis to come or that Bear Stearns was getting desperate for cash to keep operating. DebtX passed on the job because Bear Stearns wanted too much money for the assets and Greenland said he thought they would be hard to sell at the price.

“I thought we had hit the big leagues,’’ Greenland said about the Bear Stearns call. “I’m more cognizant now when somebody calls us for something new and different.’’ If it’s a big bank that should be able to tap into buyers by itself, Greenland said he is more likely to ask questions and look for broader trends.

4The company has now expanded into Latin America, China, and Europe and recently launched a credit­-rating system for commercial real-estate loans. As long as the debt is priced properly, Greenland said it’s almost always possible to find a buyer. DebtX helps financial firms list the debt, puts the information about the loans and the supporting documents on its platform, and gives banks an understanding of what their assets might be worth. Occasionally, buyers might be reluctant to purchase debt because of a country’s political situation or economic uncertainty, he said.

“It’s rare,’’ Greenland said. “We were trying to sell an asset in China and couldn’t. But it’s rare in this country.’’

5When Greenland started in this business, many bankers were reluctant to sell their loans, seeing it as a sign of weakness and concerned that their customers would be upset over getting shuttled to another institution. That’s changed, and banks now view it as a way to occasionally trim their risks in certain regions or types of lending, such as commercial real-estate. DebtX, for example, is now seeing many smaller banks selling good loans because they are getting ready to buy another bank or be bought.

“Most people know the loans are going to be sold,’’ Greenland said. “It’s not as scary to the borrower and not as scary to the banker.’’

Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at deirdre.fernandes@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @fernandesglobe.