In the run-up to naming the winners of the inaugural RIA Intel Awards on September 14, 2022, RIA Intel will publish short features highlighting the accomplishments of this year’s nominees and Rising Stars.
If there’s one thing that’s crystal clear to Marco Della Torre, CEO of Venn, Two Sigma’s portfolio analytics platform, it’s that this tumultuous period in the financial markets has made his company’s partnerships with customers that much stronger. “Folks are looking for intelligence at a time when the world is moving quickly, and they’ve really doubled down on their relationship [with us],” he says.
Institutional investors, he adds, are looking beyond digital transformation, which is where Venn comes in. “People want to modernize their business, and to leverage the internet, services, and modern technology needed to do their job,” he says. “I think that really represents a new frontier — not just the digital transformation of an industry, or a role within that industry, but the ability to go far beyond that.”
Venn’s clients, who often have relatively small teams, can access technology that they probably didn’t know was available to them, including analysis, modeling, and portfolio optimization. “Those are things that have been traditionally used by very large groups at huge costs,” he says. “It was really limited to a small set of the market.”
It’s what Venn, which embraces a quantitative approach to multi-asset portfolio risk and investment decision making, says is the next step in the industry. “There was a period where it was going from, ‘Hey, we used to have paper on our desk’ to ‘Now we have spreadsheets online and some connectivity,’” Della Torre says. “But now it’s, ‘I can have the kind of intelligence that I could never achieve before with a group of five, 10, 20, or even 50 folks.’”
Della Torre says that for the company to continue to grow and improve, he and his team must always remember to listen to their customers. “I think a lot of technology companies get enamored with building their technology, rather than listening to what their customers are really asking for. When we start to talk to our clients about not just going digital but going beyond the capabilities they thought they were limited to, that really kind of gets them excited,” he says. “It’s not just taking their existing workflows digital. It’s allowing them to look at the market in different ways. And now it’s actually providing them with institutional-grade knowledge and the capability for things like digital assets.”
The inaugural RIA Intel Awards is a celebration of financial advisors, wealth management firms, and industry leaders. Winners will be on announced on RIAIntel.com September 14, 2022 and will be honored in-person at upcoming RIA Institute Forums.
