Point Nine: The Assured Path to Compliance

Point Nine: The Assured Path to Compliance

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Andreas Roussos, Managing Partner & Director, Point NineAndreas Roussos, Managing Partner & Director
Financial institutions are subject to an ever-evolving set of regulations, putting immense pressure on staff to comply with each requirement. What exacerbates the situation is that despite having to navigate the intricacies of a heavily regulated industry, these institutions have historically been slower and more cautious to adopt emerging technologies. From post-financial crisis reforms to more stringent data privacy mandates, the regulation rulebook is constantly changing and becoming more aligned with the increasingly digital paradigm. However, today, a majority of firms lack sufficient resources and processes to submit reporting at the level of detail and sophistication required by regulators. Since regulators pay meticulous attention to every detail, financial institutions are having to devote significant effort in bolstering their compliance initiatives. It has become crucial for financial institutions to embrace tech-forward solutions that improve their bottom lines and save them from investing exhaustively in resources and new technology while simplifying regulatory reporting.

Meet Point Nine

A dedicated regulatory reporting firm, Point Nine is focused on providing trade/ transaction reporting services to legal entities across the globe. At the heart of Point Nine is a team of industry experts specialised in regulatory reporting, equipped with proprietary cloud-based technology designed to help customers fulfil their regulatory reporting requirements, streamline their processes for storing, processing and submitting data from various sources. The company collaborates with both buy- and sell-side financial firms, services providers, and corporations to help them ensure high quality and accurate reporting to remain compliant with diverse regulations. “We pride ourselves on our people-focused approach as it is them who build the technology, the excellent service, and interaction with the community. Our team is our strength. With rich industry knowledge and a commitment to keep up with the latest changes in regulations, our team is in a league of its own,” says Andreas Roussos, Managing Partner and Director of Point Nine. Notably, Point Nine’s team is dedicated to giving back to the community including other businesses, supporting local charities, and helping people reach their utmost potential while collectively securing a sustainable future. “Cultivating potential drives how we lead and empower our team, how we build our product and services for clients, and how we engage with the community at large,” he adds.

Regulatory Reporting: Not a Hassle Anymore

Point Nine’s innovative product comes with a flexible architecture that includes multifunctional portal features with the ability to report customer activities in real time. Furthermore, what makes Point Nine stand out from its competitors is its ability to access data from various systems, including customers’ in-house solutions. The architecture has an automated way of fetching, receiving or submitting enriched data while facilitating increased accuracy testing, performing advanced regulatory reconciliations, testing reference data and having a proper control framework. With its bespoke and best-in-class solution for regulatory reporting, Point Nine has processed over six billion transactions, maintaining a lower than 0.05 percent exception rate (errors) on all report submissions.

As every customer’s operational flow is different, Point Nine takes an individual and personalised approach to work with each customer.

Serving as the “bridge” between the regulator and customer allows the company to shape its technology solutions and become more adaptable to customers’ needs. Besides, Point Nine’s relationship with the regulators enables the company to stay ahead of the upcoming changes and educate clients on what is relevant to them.

Cultivating potential drives how we lead and empower our team, how we build our product and services for clients, and how we engage with the community at large

Testament to Exemplary Service

To gain a clearer perspective on the value that Point Nine delivers to its clients, Roussos recalls his company’s engagement with a client that was using multiple trading platforms, servers, hubs, bridges and CRMs. Hence, their data are stored in different sources and different logic is applied on each source. Their previous provider was befuddled by the complicated logic and reported wrong data. To mitigate the issue, Point Nine offered its system to gather all the data in one place and apply any rules stated by the client in order to export accurate data. Since wrong data reported (extremely high volume, wrong mapping of counterparties and outstanding positions, trades that never got reported, and more), the team at Point Nine discussed with the client the logic that they use for each counterparty/ client on every trading platform and hub. Following this, they implemented their system accordingly and proceeded with corrections (error out and resubmit) on everything since inception. The client also struggled with several LPs with which they needed to match the UTIs. Roussos reveals, “We contacted all their LPs and found out what is the methodology each LP uses. We managed to correct all the back-dated transactions and match them with their LPs. We also shared our UTI methodology with all their legal entity clients.” This is one of the most complicated implementations that Point Nine undertook, involving numerous liquidity providers and corporate clients, different trading capacity on each transaction, multiple data sources, complicated logic/rules/filters, and lack of communication with the client. However, Point Nine managed to go live with its reporting within two weeks and correct client’s back-dated transactions within two months.

In yet another impressive feat, Point Nine assisted a client to correct their data when NCA identified wrong outstanding positions for the company. The Point Nine team built a custom reconciliation tool especially designed for this client, got all their back dated transactions, and ran the reconciliation tool to find out the difference between the submitted transactions and the actual executed transactions. Thereafter, they corrected any wrong reported information, re-submitted the problematic transactions and submitted any transactions that may have been missed. Point Nine successfully managed to match the outstanding positions the company actually had with the outstanding positions reported to the NCA.

Point Nine has been growing and gaining momentum even amidst the pandemic. Earlier this year, the company expanded with a Business Development Manager in Luxembourg, London and also in Cyprus to tackle the local and other markets. Apart from the team and business growth, Point Nine in the process of expanding its portfolio of products while aiming to release a tool for iFRS-9 and iFRS-16 in Q4. Constantly monitoring regulators and regimes as well as the market, the company is prepared to tackle the needs emerging from such changes. “Dedicated to serving communities, we believe that each should reach their best selves. Implementing this idea at the core of Point Nine’s foundation, we commit to our corporate and social responsibility not only to contribute to those who need support but also to inspire and empower the community to partake in this commitment. This helps in cultivating potential with the ultimate goal of helping communities and economy prosper in parallel,” notes Roussos. Point Nine is also a strong advocate for women in the fintech space and is driven by a vision to make a change and impact on gender diversification.

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Top 10 Capital Market Tech Solution Companies in Europe - 2020
Point Nine

Company
Point Nine

Headquarters
Kato Polemidia, Cyprus

Management
Andreas Roussos, Managing Partner & Director

Description
Point Nine specialises in regulatory reporting and offers a proprietary cloud-based technology designed to help customers fulfil their regulatory reporting requirements efficiently and accurately. A dedicated regulatory reporting firm, Point Nine is focused on providing trade/transaction reporting services to legal entities across the globe. At the heart of Point Nine is a team of industry experts specialised in regulatory reporting, equipped with proprietary cloud-based technology designed to help customers fulfil their regulatory reporting requirements, streamline their processes for storing, processing and submitting data from various sources