Meet Proov.ai — A Demo Day[s] 10 Presenting Startup
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the...
Blog Meet Quorus — A Demo Day[s] 10 Presenting Startup
Mar 04, 2024
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the event, as always, is free. Demo Days are exciting because we get to showcase startups that are on the very cutting edge of innovation and you get to see what they’re up to before they’re discovered.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight a few of this year’s presenting entrepreneurs. Today, we’re talking to John Hill, Co-Founder and CEO of Connecticut- based Quorus, which is partnering with asset and wealth managers to offer customizable, tax-managed investment portfolios based on the manager’s proprietary investment strategies. Quorus is presenting on April 11.
Q. John, tell us a bit about Quorus. What problems are you solving?
A. Quorus partners with asset managers to offer their investment strategies in personalized, tax-efficient accounts.
Q. What is your company’s origin story?
A. Scott Shumway and I founded Quorus to help asset managers make the transition to custom portfolio based offers. I lived the transition firsthand building Vanguard’s direct indexing pilot. Looking out at the market, I felt like direct indexing and passive was getting all the did not feel like there was a good partner for firms that did not run all passive strategies. We built Quorus to help them.
Q. Can you describe what it’s been like to be part of the FinTech Sandbox community?
A. Being a member has been an incredible asset for our development. Investment data is incredibly expensive and fragmented. The Data Access Residency program allowed us to work with a range of data partners, explore our needs, and ultimately find a data partner in FactSet that would help us accelerate our product. Aside from data access, the broader network of founders and partners that we have been able to engage with has been tremendous.
Q. Why is data access important to your startup?
A. Data is the life blood of our offering. Everything we do requires accurate market data, from partnering with asset managers to build a bespoke tax methodology, running backtests, maintaining custom risk models, running our UI and portfolio management process. Data is everywhere. Without investment data, we do not have a company.
Q. What milestones has Quorus achieved so far?
A. We have hit a few. We launched the first version of our product last year and closed our first round of institutional funding. Since then, we have grown the team, signed asset manager partners and advisor firms, grown our firm assets under management, and continued to evolve the product. We have a tremendous ways to go, but we are proud of the progress we have made and excited at the partnerships we continue to add and expand.
Q. What trends in fintech are you most excited about?
A. We continue to be excited by the growing interest in customized investing. By giving asset managers the means to offer their strategies in this product structure, we can expand access to high quality investment strategies, give investors more choice in how they invest their money, and ultimately provide advisors a better way to serve their clients. Outside of this, we are excited by the continued growth of the independent wealth management channel and of course, remain very interesting in seeing how generative AI continues to mature.
Q. How does Quorus think about leveraging AI in a differentiated way?
A. We believe that we are a long way off from having AI run client portfolios, which is our core value proposition. That said, we are exploring interesting use cases that can improve our internal operational efficiency and help portfolio managers in their process.
Q. What’s next for Quorus?
A. We continue to work closely with firms that are in various stages of due diligence and offer design. We look forward to bringing these relationships to market this year. In addition to deepening our existing relationships, we continue to add new partner firms. We value working with firms who are eager to roll up their sleeves, and co-design a product that fits the unique nature of their business.
_________
To hear more about Quorus and 11 other exciting fintech startups, be sure to register for FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] 10!
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the...
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the...
This year, FinTech Sandbox Demo Day[s] will take place across two days, April 9 & April 11. The presentations will be virtual and the...