In this episode of the Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Alexei, founder and CEO of Clearpic (operating under the brand Flipit). Alexei recounts his 15‑year background in risk advisory and the evolution from a traditional consultancy to a data‑driven platform that aggregates public‑domain corporate information across Central Asia and the Caspian region. He explains the types of data collected—company registration details, ownership structures, directors, watchlists, state procurement records, and litigation—and why this region presents unique challenges such as scarce, inconsistent records, language script transitions, and complex ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) identification. The conversation delves into the technical solution: a graph‑database backbone built on Neo4j and advanced entity‑resolution powered by Rezep (now part of BibleStreet) to deduplicate name variations in rare languages. Alexei outlines two future directions: extending existing data into new product lines like state‑procurement intelligence for business development, and geographic expansion along the Trans‑Caspian transit corridor into additional jurisdictions (Georgia, Armenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey). The episode concludes with contact details (LinkedIn, website, coffee in Riga) for listeners interested in collaborating.
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Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
And here we are again for another podcast, and today I'm with Alexei from Clearpic. Could you tell us a little bit more about yourself and also the company that you work for?
Sure. Hi, hi. A real pleasure to be here today. I come from the risk intelligence, risk advisory background. Been doing this for like 15 years now. Time flies, doesn't it?
When you're having fun.
It's been lots of fun, some stress, but it's like everything in life is probably a mixture of that.
Absolutely.
So we've been doing risk advisory for a long time. Started our own company in 2016. And then a few years later, we actually realized that there is so much data even in those places that people believe are low transparent, and they are, but still the data exists. So we started acquiring this data from various sources. Everything's public domain and sort of playing with that, seeing how we can make it better, more navigable, more friendly. And several years later, here we are, Flipit.
And Alexey, you mean data? Which data are we talking about?
Sure. It's basically all types of corporate information, business-related information, like excerpts from corporate records, like all this usual stuff. The name of the company, business activity, the date of registration, capital. Well, sounds probably boring. Not as much when you see the full picture. Also ownership, directorship, various business activities, watchlists, state procurement, litigation. So basically everything that describes daily operations of business from all possible angles.
And where are you based, Alexei?
We are— the company is based in Riga. We also have representation in London, in the UK. And the development team is all over the place, like often happens these days.
Yeah, no, exactly. When we met the first time, which was basically in Riga, you told me that you have a strong focus on Central Asia and the Caspian region. Why is that?
For many reasons, really. In our advisory days, which I mean, we're still doing a lot of advisory, we have done a lot of work in this region and we realized both the challenges and the opportunities in the region. Like, uh, in some places, uh, like Turkmenistan, like Tajikistan, like, uh, Uzbekistan, until recently it was really, really difficult to get, uh, information, to get reliable information, up-to-date information, and even more difficult to make any conclusions based on that, uh, for various challenges. So we— for us it was difficult. I mean, doing proper work in those regions. And we realized that we are not alone in this journey. So we started doing this because we fundamentally, we know all the difficulties on the local landscape. We know them by heart. It's also a very important region and increasingly important in its own right, like 80 million people, growing economies in recent years, decent recovery after the COVID pandemic and all the lockdowns, all the restrictions. There have been also various legacy issues. I mean, it plays differently in different places, but those included child labor, forced labor, so quite serious stuff really. And also, obviously, these days the region is even more topical with all the geopolitics in place, the China influence, interests of the European Union, the US, Russia. So yes, It's an interesting journey, particularly these days.
And you talked about challenges that you have encountered. So what were like typical challenges that you would have in that region that you may not have in the rest of the world?
Well, first, like UBO, which is a professional term meaning ultimate beneficial ownership or owner, depending on the context. Finding out that is already a massive challenge. In some places, the corporate records— this is like really the first place you go to to start building a company profile— is not easily accessible. And also, you need to understand the context. Like in the West, for example, ownership does mean ownership because those rights are respected, they are protected. And people place serious emphasis on that. Not as much in that part of the world. Sometimes if you control cash flow as opposed to shares, because shares don't mean much, this is where the real control lies. And also corporate structures are not always formalized. Like you have 20 companies ostensibly connected to each other, but in reality they basically represent this Same operation. So it is both contexts, like knowing the soft differences and also having access to quality data.
No, interesting. So you showed me how you actually work on a very interactive floor, like UBO mapping. So how can you marry then the difficulty with the map? And can you also explain what your affiliation mapping does?
Sure, sure. So, uh, basically there's 2 challenges here. First, to get this information, and second, to make sure that the connections and affiliations are visible. Because in that part of the world, you have all these, uh, language, uh, complications, challenges. Like in some countries, they used Roman script. Now they are, well, making the transition to— sorry, they used Cyrillic script. Now they're making this transition to Roman script. Also, there are, in both, there are 2 variations, like standard, say, like, you know, like, Russified or like English, and also with local variations, like letters that are slightly different, like using umlauts and so on. So, and for standard search engines, obviously those would be different names. And this results in having probably, and this is not an exaggeration, we have seen such examples, like the same person may have several dozens of variations of their name.
Oh, really?
So if you basically just look at that and you try to conduct searches manually, you will, there is only one thing you are sure of, you will miss something. So the challenge is to make sure those variations are properly recognized. They are deduplicated. And when someone or something is connected to more than one entity, you have to make sure that all these connections are visible on the platform.
Yeah. So no, that sounds like very complex stuff. What's the answer? Is that expertise or is it technology or maybe a combination of both?
It is both, really. Expertise is not always easy to digitalize. So sometimes it comes with your sort of human interaction, as always. But, uh, we're particularly happy with the technology we have. Well, like, the first pillar is the graph databases, and we partner with Neo4j, one of the industry leaders in this field. We're really proud of that. We are part of their startup program, and it helps a lot. Like, the technology is something we— this technology is something we can build upon our own product, and we do that. It's, it's, it's a— it's been a real pleasure to work, to be able to work with them.
Yeah.
And then the second partner, the second pillar we have is Rezep Text Analytics, and they are now part of BibleStreet. We use their solutions for entity resolution and records matching, and They have this deep learning technology, and this technology enables us to, well, identify similar names of individuals, basically what I just told you. Obviously, these languages that we deal with in Central Asia and the Caspian region are so-called rare languages. There are not massive bodies of text in those languages available for analysis. So for that reason, we also have to work with this technology, adapting it to our own needs. So it's not just basically buying packaged solutions and integrating those in our own platform. It is taking all the advantages of these brilliant products, but also a lot of work to make them applicable to the challenges that we face.
Yeah, so there is a lot of tweaking involved.
Indeed.
And probably machine learning. We're almost at the end of this podcast. And what I'm very interested about, Alexei, is that You gave— you pictured a very nice product, but what's in shop for the future? Are there any things that we can expect to come?
Absolutely. So we basically have 2 directions. First is making more products with the information in the countries we have already. So basically new applications, maybe developing a new product for state procurement, not just from the risk point of view, but also from the point of view of business development. for various teams that can build presence on the local markets through state procurement. It's basically the same data, but delivered in a different way. And there's a lot of commercial application in that. But also we have other markets, other regions that we would love to tap into for many reasons, like Central Asia, for example, is now a vital part of so-called Trans-Caspian Transit Road. And it's a challenging task. But on the other hand, the EU have committed to invest in that. China been there for a long time. And if we just go along this transit road, we have like another 10 jurisdictions to look at from other Caspian region countries like Georgia, like Armenia, to even some parts of the European Union like Bulgaria and Romania and also Turkey. Like if you take Turkey out of the map, there is no way you can deliver goods from China to Europe by land. So I mean, '24 promises to be an exciting year for us and we're looking forward to what we can do in the next 10 months.
Nice, nice. And I wish you obviously all the best. Where can people contact you if they've got questions or they want to work with you guys? How do they contact you?
Well, all the contacts are online. I'm happy to talk to people on LinkedIn. or using the website. Also, if anyone happens to be in Riga, always a pleasure to grab a coffee and discuss business.
And it's a beautiful city, I can say that.
Thank you.
Alexei, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you also to the audience, and please stay tuned. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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