July SPARK - Interfax Updates

MEDIA AND RISK MONITORING

The first signs of mounting business problems frequently appear in the press, long before they are legally documented. Due diligence based on media materials makes it possible to respond to negative events in a timely manner, avoiding not only financial losses, but also potential claims from government bodies. This year we have expanded the function for assessing the reputational risks of counterparties in SPARK by granting our subscribers with access to a bigger volume of data from SCAN media analysis and reputation management system (scan-interfax.ru).

PUBLICATIONS IN MEDIA SECTION

The News and Media Articles section has been transformed into Publications in Media with expanded data in this module:

• Reputational risk index (RRI) with chart illustrating changes over past year
• “Intelligent filter” to refine search by region, sector, full name of director
• Dynamics of total number of publications about a company/Dynamics of risk references
• Segmentation of news by risk factors and business topics
• Top most noteworthy publications for period under review

ASSESSMENT OF BUSINESS REPUTATION SERVICE

SPARK functions have been supplemented with a new service for analyzing business reputation and early detection of risks based on media materials.

Extended module capabilities:

• Monitoring publications according by lists of counterparties
• Automatic tracking of references to companies and individuals in context of facts relating to certain risk categories
• Daily reports with “risk” news about counterparties
• Ability to e-mail report with monitoring results
• Full texts of publications with highlighted objects and topics
• Five-year archive of media materials about a company/individual

New risk factors

The list of “Factors Requiring Attention” has been expanded for the purposes of helping businesses comply with legal requirements, enriching data about business activity, integrity and potential risks of companies and individual entrepreneurs.

NEW REGISTERS:

1. Agricultural Charter?(7,500 members)

2. Haulage Charter?(4,500 members)

3. Anti-corruption Charter?(2,200 members)

4. Unified Register of Developers?(4,300 members)

5. Developers whose properties are included in the register of problem debts

6. Organizations that have waived bankruptcy moratorium* (ca. 3,500 companies and individual entrepreneurs)

* The Russian government introduced a six-month bankruptcy moratorium on April 1, 2022. The moratorium does not apply to the aforementioned categories of businesses.

FACTOR SIGNALING THE POSSIBILITY OF FINANCIAL PROBLEMS ARISING:

7.“There are enforcement proceedings, returned to the claimant” *

* Introduced for companies whose latest enforcement proceedings (at least three in three years) ended with the return of enforcement documents for any reason: impossible to determine whereabouts of debtor or his property, or there is no property subject to foreclosure.

FACTOR FOR ASSESSING THE RELIABILITY OF INDIVIDUALS:

8. “Changing the location of tax registration more than twice in a calendar year”- for private entrepreneurs (same factor applies to legal entities)

PAYMENT DISCIPLINE

Payment discipline indicators have proven effective for detecting the first signs of deterioration of the state of a business and predicting its possible bankruptcy in the coming months. This prompt source of information has developed rapidly in 2022.

DATA ENRICHMENT

The list of participants in "SPARK-Payment Monitoring,” the nationwide program of voluntary exchange of information about payment discipline, has been expanded since the beginning of the year. The volume of data supplied to SPARK has increased – mainly due to housing and utilities providers.

• 73 mln (+6%) – number of invoices processed
• 890,000 (+4%) – number of companies and private entrepreneurs with data on payment discipline
• +3% – number of legal entities and private entrepreneurs with Payment Discipline Indices*

* PDI is calculated if there are at least two invoices posted by different providers of information.

EARNINGS REPORTS FOR 2021

Financial statements of large and medium Russian businesses were uploaded to SPARK.?2.1 million legal entities have disclosed financial results for the year:

• 835,500 in full
• 1.2 mln in brief
• 70,000 non-profit organizations