Point Nine, an award-winning company, uses its in-house proprietary technology to provide a best in-class solution and regulatory reporting requirements to all its clients.

“Point Nine collaborates with both buy- and sell-side financial firms, service providers, and corporations to help them ensure high-quality and accurate reporting to remain compliant with EMIR, MiFIR, SFTR, ASIC, FinfraG and Canada.”

A major element of the reporting requirements financial firms adhere to is transparency, in addition to achieving significant transcendence over time. They must understand the importance of their trade and transaction reporting obligations. Each method of reporting varies significantly when it comes to the client information required and the speed at which it needs to be submitted. This pushes companies that provide T&TR services to continuously improve the quality of their services.

By offering fully automated bespoke solutions, Point Nine always stays abreast of industry needs. Its solutions are cloud-based, have cross-asset coverage and feature elements such as data analysis and mapping, validation engine, system, and platform-agnostic capacity, full UTI management, error handling, client portal, and email notifications.

Point Nine is an industry-leading team of experts, specializing in trade processing and reporting. It was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus.

The Silicon Review exclusively spoke to Andreas Roussos, CEO of Point Nine, about how the company is revolutionizing the industry and plans to lead from the front. Below is an excerpt.

Head to Head with Andreas Roussos, CEO of Point Nine

Q. What can you tell us about your in-house proprietary technology platform? And how does it help meet your customers’ regulatory reporting requirements?

We use our in-house cutting-edge proprietary technology to provide a best-in-class solution to all customers for their regulatory reporting obligations. Since October 2015, Point Nine processed and reported more than seven billion transactions across all asset classes, with a proven track record of 99.95% submissions success in EU/UK transaction reporting.

Q. In what industries are your customers? Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

We work with both buy- and sell-side financial firms, service providers, and corporates on all their regulatory reporting obligations. We help prime brokers, fund managers, fund administrators, banks, corporates, and systematic internalisers, among others.

In one example case, a client needed a complete service to handle their EMIR Reporting (>210 million trades last year). Products used were from the ETD category, which is Equity Options, Equity Futures, FX Options, and FX Futures. The Data sources were in-house OMS and counterparties. The counterparties consisted of five clearing members in South Korea, India, and Brazil. Our solution contained Point Nine’s ability to consume data from all the counterparties, report within the T+1 time frame, and perform data mapping. Validating and enriching the data was paramount for our client’s compliance team and the result included error resolution by our team and custom reports for the client’s compliance team.

Q. What are your focus areas?

The importance of customer service is paramount for business growth. Aided by our in-house proprietary technology, the Point Nine team provides best-in-class solutions to all clients. We are proud of our onboarding process. Upon partnering, we guide every client through our organised and efficient onboarding process. This allows the support team to ensure that every client is set up for success.

We do real-time reporting. By working with Point Nine, clients receive an end-of-day report via email. Not only does this provide transparency to customers, but it also offers them complete control of what is being reported. Approximately 15% of the trades Point Nine team receives for submission contain errors. Therefore, Point Nine produces and shares an end-of-year report for clients that show the number of errors. Our team then works with them to improve their data.

We also apply a dedicated support policy. Our support team respects every client’s needs. Internally, we adhere to a strict ‘support policy’, ensuring that our support team resolves all issues within 24 hours; our primary aim is to ensure timeliness and accuracy in reporting whilst reducing costs and associated risks.

Furthermore, our clients receive 24/7 access to the Point Nine portal, which allows them to view and export data, files, and reports submitted on their behalf for their trade repositories and/or approved reporting mechanisms.

Q. What strategies are in place to encourage innovation in your company?

From new products, services, and business models to the development of replicable innovation processes and a culture that fosters entrepreneurship, our innovation strategy helps the company meet its growth challenges.

Our innovation strategy includes processes and events to capture ideas. For example, we have set up suggestion boxes in the workplace and hold regular workshops or occasional company away days to brainstorm ideas. A supportive atmosphere is in place in which people feel free to express their ideas without the risk of criticism. We take encouragement for risk-taking and experimentation seriously—we appreciate the effort, even if it somewhat fails.

We promote openness between individuals and teams. Good ideas and knowledge are shared with others and newsletters are also in place that help people share information and encourage innovation. That said, people at all levels share responsibility for innovation, so everybody feels involved in taking the business forward. The avoidance of multiple layers of management or decision-making in our organisation makes people feel their ideas matter. We reward innovation and celebrate success, while incentives are in place, encouraging staff to think creatively.

We look for imagination and creativity when recruiting new employees and we observe that an innovative working approach appeals to employees with higher levels of creativity and lateral thinking, helping Point Nine hold on to their best talent.

Q. No doubt Point Nine is charting new territories in this segment. Given how frequently circumstances change, what plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

As noted above, Point Nine collaborates with both buy- and sell-side financial firms, service providers, and corporations to help them ensure high-quality and accurate reporting to remain compliant with EMIR, MiFIR, SFTR, ASIC, FinfraG and Canada. In a world of unprecedented disruption, transformation is about the need to generate new value, unlock new opportunities and drive new growth. In this respect, Point Nine always remains up to date with new technologies, creates new partnerships to explore new markets, and implements innovative ideas derived from creative in-house processes. Point Nine Data Trust recently became a dedicated regulatory reporting firm, a separate entity from Point Nine Limited to focus on providing trade/transaction reporting services to legal entities across the globe. We transcend. We celebrate creativity. We disrupt.

Q. Is there anything else you want us to highlight that we might have missed?

We are thrilled to be selected by a renowned firm to power trade and transaction reporting together. Point Nine was selected by FIS^® (Jacksonville, Florida) to collaborate through a synergistic partnership to seamlessly extend the Point Nine service and expertise to their valued customers, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and transparency.

We also partnered with B.fine Belgium, a RegTech company, to scale up on a mission to industrialise regulatory reporting processes in financial institutions. Importantly, we are looking forward to strengthening and developing these partnerships further toward achieving common goals.

Andreas Roussos | CEO

Andreas Roussos is a versatile financial, business, and operations executive with an extensive portfolio of leadership successes across a wide range of organisations – including highly regulated functional platforms. He is committed to excellence and continuously surpassing objectives, driving the optimal allocation of resources and talents. He is adept in the development of robust solutions while leading continuous improvements within high-pressure environments. Skilled in forging and cultivating productive relationships with clients and all levels of stakeholders, he is fuelling revenues and raising organisational recognition to industry leadership.

“Point Nine was selected by FIS® (Jacksonville, Florida) to collaborate through a synergistic partnership to seamlessly extend the Point Nine service and expertise to their valued customers, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and transparency.”