A fundamentally new professional solution to assess the risk of doing business in Russia and other FSU countries – SPARK 3.0 - is unveiled by Interfax

The Interfax Information Services Group, the leading provider of business and financial information, releases SPARK 3.0, a new version of its analytical system SPARK, which holds data on over 25 million registered entities and private entrepreneurs in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. SPARK 3.0 partially covers other former Soviet republics as well and allows to find potential risks in the activities of partners and competitors, to receive up to date information on company registration, ultimate beneficial ownership, court rulings, bankruptcies, company affiliations and much more.

SPARK 3.0 will be available to thousands of users on November 25 and will include changes to the system’s interfaces, functionality and capabilities. Every request will run through the entire solution, scanning information from all countries and data available. New sources have been added to allow for greater in depth analysis and the number of cross-border ownership networks, established by working with foreign corporate registers, has also increased substantially.

"The volume of information on international business activities increases 70%-80% each year. The amount of unstructured data, requiring the use of the latest technologies, is also on the increase. SPARK 3.0 will enable users to extract information from Big Data – from any source, regardless of its scale and structure, including semi-structured data. SPARK 3.0 will solve any problem our clients may encounter in managing risk effectively," said Roman Laba, Interfax Deputy CEO and General Director of SPARK.

The new SPARK will provide more opportunities to monitor information, one of SPARK’s most popular services, which allows subscribers to receive real time alerts when there are any changes to data on companies and individual entrepreneurs in their sphere of interest.

The analytical assessments of SPARK, the Financial Risk Index and the Due Diligence Index have been updated. Information about risk factors for a corporate entity is presented in more graphic detail.

The system will offer a multi-dimensional analysis of risks for a list of companies, dividing them into groups according to their sector, level of risk and adverse factors (liquidation, bankruptcy, reorganization). These tools make it possible to track any changes in the quality of user’s credit portfolio, or changes in the profile of risks faced by counterparties.

SPARK 3.0 has trebled the number of companies in the Payment Discipline Index, which assesses the risk of outstanding payments. This is due to an increase in the number of partners contributing to Interfax‘s SPARK Payments Monitoring project, who voluntarily report when their counterparties have paid their invoices, and indicates whether payments were completed on time.

*** SPARK (www.spark-interfax.ru) is a professional solution for the verification of partners, credit and tax risk management, marketing investment analysis and affiliation.

SPARK, created by Interfax in 2003, is the undisputed leader in the business information market. SPARK’s advantages include its high quality and accurate content, extensive range of sources, unique analysis capabilities (in particular solvency and dependability rankings and scorings for companies) and extensive international coverage.

Interfax Group Public Relations Department
+7 (499) 251-73-83