Customer Success Spotlight: CleverAlpha

At Intrinio, we are known for being a top provider of financial data. Our powerful technology is paving the way for developers and large enterprises across the globe and is positively changing the way our dispersed financial sector operates. Intrinio’s advanced, reliable platform delivers premium data packages that allow innovators to build with a peace of mind.  

We are proud to collaborate with some of the most innovative and impactful entrepreneurs and businesses, and we’re delighted to showcase their leading-edge work in our blog. Intrinio's Customer Success Spotlight series will focus on a client that has used our powerful technology to build something revolutionary.

Meet April's Customer Success Spotlight, CleverAlpha! CleverAlpha is a California based digital asset and investment advisor platform that specializes in diversified and systematic investment strategies.

The robo-advisory service charges zero startup costs and zero maintenance fees for their automated advisory services. And not only does this platform offer quality portfolio management services at a low price, but the company also provides a simple and quick setup process, powerful analytics, free educational videos, and an array of convenient loan calculators. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Rick Cabanes, the Co-founder of CleverAlpha, and discussed his professional background, explored the platform's history, and talked about their biggest challenges and successes.

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Give us the elevator pitch for your company.

Our white-labeled robo solution gives banks, credit unions and accounting firms the ability to service (and monetize) their customer' liquidity before it leaves the institution to an outside money manager.

What is your professional background?

I started years ago as a belly to belly, pit trader on the options floors, then went upstairs to prop trade and then switched from equities to running fixed income books at investment banks. I've been working at the Wall Street sausage factories for decades. It's been a fun ride, I've seen a little bit and even learned a few things.  

What inspired you to start your company?

Just watching the unstoppable digitization of Wall Street: starting with the derivative exchanges in the 90's, to the government and the corporate bond markets through the 2000s and now to the asset management business in the last few years. It should be screamingly obvious by now that wherever there is an opportunity for the digital delivery of a financial product, it will become the inevitable path forward as digitization increases speed, access, transparency and quality while driving down costs. What is amazing is that a great portion of this innovation has come from small start-ups with novel solutions like ours. This may largely be because developing digital platforms within large Wall Street banks is difficult to say the least and I know, because I've tried many times. To be fair, it's not like the larger firms don't want to innovate, it's just that the management teams there know they do not understand technology, and moreover do not want to stick their necks out for risky innovation plays. They often just wait for a winning solution to become mature enough to simply either purchase or implement. So, innovation - when it's time and proven itself in the market-place - is generally just bought or conscripted via the brute force of large firm capital.

What have been your biggest challenges, and what did you learn from them?

Aside from bringing features and solutions that are novel and better than the rest, our biggest challenge is staying informed and on top of all of the transformation behind the curtain. So, although we have built and own all our own technology, we still have to link our infrastructure to other vendors to ensure that we are using the best and cheapest APIs so that we can pass on delivery of the best and cheapest solution to our customers. Lucky for us, we live in a time where there are a lot of amazing new solutions in everything from KYC, payments, security and of course with pricing providers like Intrinio.    

What have been your biggest successes?

At this early stage, simply launching. It has been an incredible undertaking to get us to the point of opening our doors for business in 2022. The commitment to a multi-year, long arc goal and the continual daily effort to execute on our vision is really only understood by the folks that have tried it. When people ask us if they should be signing an NDA because of the worry that someone would steal an idea or a facet of our business, I simply say to them, "no need, welcome to the Gates of Hell... have fun trying to replicate what we've built."

How do you set yourself apart from your competitors?

You'll have to see for yourself: www.CleverAlpha-Institutional.com

Why did you choose to work with Intrinio?

When we started out, your flexible pricing options were ideal for what we needed. As we ramped our needs matured, your service has come to fit nicely with the fairly straight forward data feed APIs we need today. There is beauty in simplicity, and we try to live by that with our platform and our preference for vendors.

Power your business with the best data

Do you need accurate market data for your platform or business? Intrinio is a leading financial data provider and is recognized for providing high-quality data, immediate customer service, and modern tools for a variety of platforms, businesses, and fintech companies. If you are looking for clean, dependable data, request a consultation today, and to learn more about our real-time data packages please visit intrinio.com. Our data experts are here to help and find a solution for your business.

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