Cedar Rose, a Limassol
Chamber member specializing in business intelligence, recently launched a new
service for its clients. Cedar Rose CEO Antoun Massaad spoke to
‘’Entrepreneurial Limassol’’
1. What
are the main challenges facing the Cedar Rose line of business in the era of
the Covid-19 pandemic?
Like most
companies, we had to adapt. Cedar Rose has offices and people working remotely
around the world. A large percentage of the team was based in Lebanon, which
was suffering from street protests long before the pandemic started. So, they
were accustomed to working from home already. Our Business Continuity Committee
was regularly discussing crisis plans and preparing for disaster recovery.
Robust forward planning and preparation have protected us through many crises
including the 2006 war in Lebanon, lengthy power outages in Cyprus in 2011 and
the economic crisis in 2013 – to name a few.
We were
prepared for the worst and had a committee to oversee the smooth switch to home
working. Initially, working from home complicated our research and outreach
since companies and government offices were often closed too. But within a few
weeks, most organisations had caught up. It also helped that much of our
revenue now comes from online automated solutions which remained unaffected by
the Covid crisis.
2. You
recently launched ‘’Cedar Rose Comply’’. Could you tell us a few things about
this new service?
Our CR
Comply service is an instant global compliance tool that assesses third-party
risk levels and accelerates the customer on-boarding process. It helps our
clients uncover sanctioned entities, Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and
adverse media on companies and individuals globally.
CR Comply
uses machine learning algorithms capable of processing 6.5 million articles per
day. Developed by world-leading engineering teams and curated by teams of
subject matter experts, these algorithms produce results with a higher degree
of accuracy than human checks.
The
service is available in 14 languages using 10,000 data sources and covering 150
million articles per month and comes pre-selected with proactive monitoring
service for twelve months from the minute you use the service to screen anyone
or any entity of any type. CR Comply provides instant alerts should your counter
party’s compliance status change with no manual intervention or processes on
your side.
3. How
important do you reckon business intelligence is likely to be in the expected
post-pandemic re-start of the world economy?
I see
business intelligence being a sought-after commodity as the pandemic
eases, first and foremost because many businesses will never operate in
the same way as before. Exposure to debt brought on by the crisis will leave
many companies with the choice between paying their employees or their
suppliers.
Powerful
technologies such as artificial intelligence will become more widely used for
many in the quest for finding out about new or existing clients and their
exposure amongst others to money laundering and fraudulent practices.