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.