Несмотря на вызванное пандемией коронавируса сокращение турпотока более чем на 80% в 2020 году, в новом сезоне Кипр намерен изменить ситуацию к лучшему, запустив самую крупную в истории страны цифровую кампанию по привлечению туристов.
Краткосрочный план развития туризма Кипра базируется на трех основных направлениях. Использование цифровых технологий для продвижения кипрского туристического продукта – одно из них. Поскольку миллионы людей по всему миру сейчас проводят больше времени в интернете из-за карантина, это идеальный момент для запуска онлайн-кампании, отметил глава Подминистерства туризма Кипра Саввас Пердиос.
«Новый креативный рекламный материал уже находится в стадии разработки. Он включает в себя фотографии, видео и другую продукцию, связанную с туризмом, а также новый туристический логотип страны», – сказал Пердиос.
Помимо этого разрабатывается цифровая платформа для мониторинга имиджа Кипра в соцсетях и электронных СМИ. «Если турист оставляет отзыв о Кипре или о полученном здесь опыте, мы теперь сможем отследить эти комментарии, проанализировать реакцию людей и соответственно заняться улучшением нашего туристического продукта», – отметил глава подминистерства.
Два других приоритетных направления для кипрского туристического сектора – это улучшение существующей инфраструктуры и реализация проектов по стимулированию туризма в горных районах и сельской местности.
Так, правительство планирует провести модернизацию ряда туристических объектов, например, велосипедных маршрутов, культурных и религиозных памятников, мест для дайвинга и пляжей. Ранее глава ведомства уже озвучивал несколько идей в этом направлении, среди которых было развитие эко-парков и винных отелей. Кроме того, Пердиос отметил важность кампании, направленной на повышение экологической сознательности среди местных жителей. Постоянные жители Кипра должны понимать, что красоты острова требуют защиты и бережного отношения, добавил он.
Blockchain-enabled business models will present a seismic shift to how business is conducted in the future. Its impact on commerce will be gamechanging, especially given the increasingly digital global economy and the decentralisation of business models and stakeholders enabled by blockchain. In this direction, a new dimension of innovation awaits.
Everyone should know these 13 things about blockchains
1. Bitcoin, a money exchange system, pioneered blockchain technology and today, it has more than 8 million accounts and grew by more than 100% per year since it began in 2010.
2. Blockchains can be public (like the internet) or private (like an intranet).
3. In terms of its development, blockchain is where the internet was 20 years ago.
4. Only 0.5% of the world’s population is using blockchain today, but 50% or 3.77 billion people use the internet.
5. There is significant investment by today’s tech giants such as IBM and Microsoft in blockchain technology. IBM dedicates $200 million and 1,000 employees to blockchain-powered projects. The average investment in blockchain projects is $1 million.
6. Over the last five years, VCs have invested more than $1 billion into blockchain companies.
7. 90% of major North American and European banks are exploring blockchain solutions. EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THESE 13 THINGS ABOUT BLOCKCHAINS Bernard Marr, www.forbes.com
8. Blockchains are highly transparent, because anyone with access to a blockchain can view the entire chain.
9. Similar to a Google doc, all participants within a network see all changes to the ledger. The ledger is constantly updated and each participant has their own copy of it.
10. A blockchain is most vulnerable to a breach when it first come online.
11. 9 out of 10 agree that blockchain will disrupt the banking and financial industry. It is estimated that banks could save $8-12 billion annually if they used blockchain technology.
12. One-third of C-level executives are considering adopting or are using blockchain technology.
13. Just like with the internet, there will be jobs that become obsolete. But, there will be new careers that we haven’t even dreamed up yet that will be created as a result of the blockchain transformation.
Bernard Marr, www.forbes.com
Some ways to use blockchain technologies
Chris Neiger, The Motley Fool
Five reasons that show blockchain is the future
Built on blockchain, cryptocurrencies are decentralised and use a distributed ledger to track, control, and monitor the flow of the transactions. This eliminates central banks, governments and gives control to the users — at least the ones that know what they are doing. But it’s not just fintech; blockchain can also eliminate the game of middlemen in several key areas to bring efficiency, transparency and eliminate corruption at the highest level.
No more middlemen
Diverse implementation potential
Rapid growth in market value
Use in e-governance
Confidence of business leaders.
Suprita Anupam, www.inc42.com
History of blockchain
Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups." Further work on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks was described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. They wanted to implement a system where document timestamps could not be tampered with. In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Dave Bayer incorporated Merkle trees to the design, which improved its efficiency by allowing several document certificates to be collected into one block.
The first blockchain was conceptualised by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nakamoto improved the design in an important way using a Hashcashlike method to timestamp blocks without requiring them to be signed by a trusted party and introducing a difficulty parameter to stabilise rate with which blocks are added to the chain. The design was implemented the following year by Nakamoto as a core component of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions on the network.
In August 2014, the bitcoin blockchain file size, containing records of all transactions that have occurred on the network, reached 20 GB (gigabytes). In January 2015, the size had grown to almost 30 GB, and from January 2016 to January 2017, the bitcoin blockchain grew from 50 GB to 100 GB in size. The ledger size had exceeded 200 GB by early 2020. The words block and chain were used separately in Satoshi Nakamoto's original paper, but were eventually popularised as a single word, blockchain, by 2016.
According to Accenture, an application of the diffusion of innovations theory suggests that blockchains attained a 13.5% adoption rate within financial services in 2016, therefore reaching the early adopters phase. Industry trade groups joined to create the Global Blockchain Forum in 2016, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.
In May 2018, Gartner found that only 1% of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organisations, and only 8% of CIOs were in the short-term "planning or [looking at] active experimentation with blockchain".
Source: Wikipedia.org
Chief Executive Officer of BDSwiss Group, Alexander Oelfke, spoke to Successful Business about the Group’s operations, the market, Covid-19, and where the financial services industry could be headed.
Who is BDSwiss and what does the company do?
BDSwiss is a global financial services group offering secure access to the financial markets. We serve over 1.5 million registered clients from our headquarters in Limassol and facilitate more than $80 billion per month in trading volume. Despite our relatively short history, we’ve quickly grown to over 250 people and gained recognition from our industry peers for the level of service we provide to our clients in 186 countries.
As a company, we act as a portal for our clients to trade or invest their hard-earned money and assist them in fulfilling their aspirations of generating a return. We also provide our clients with professional education and market research, so they’re trained and prepared on how to trade various assets such as stocks, commodities, currencies, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Our clients depend on us to serve as a bridge between them and the vast liquidity pools of trading activity occurring globally. This includes maintaining cutting-edge systems they can rely on to conduct their trading and manage their investment portfolios.
What is the ultimate vision you have for BDSwiss?
BDSwiss was founded eight years ago with a vision of offering an outstanding trading experience. To achieve this, we knew we must be committed to delivering both quality and quantity in every aspect of a trader’s activity.
Almost a decade since launch, we’ve become one of Europe’s leading companies in the retail trading space – but we’re not resting on our laurels. To succeed long-term, we must invest in progressive innovations and deliver avant-garde products to allow us to transcend the FX industry altogether.
Popular interest in the financial markets continues to grow while the number of people choosing to self-manage their wealth is also increasing. By offering direct access to the financial arena, alongside the education necessary to prosper there, BDSwiss has become one of the fastest-growing brokers in the world. Our success is built on cultivating trust and driven by tech innovations that allow our clients to manage their wealth on a day-to-day basis.
We’re committed to ensuring quality, efficiency, and transparency to benefit all our clients on a global scale. This approach means we’re always competitive and take nothing for granted. As a company, we have the flexibility to adapt, as well as the strength to deliver. Today, that means we provide unique products and services at scale while remaining fully compliant with regulators.
How has BDSwiss been affected by Covid?
Covid has proved to be a living nightmare for everyone. No one has been spared.
In terms of the pandemic’s direct impact on our business, I am pleased to report that BDSwiss’ continuous investment in Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and crisis preparedness has helped us mitigate every risk. On a brighter note, it has also fuelled a surge in online trading activity and boosted our trading volumes by more than 300%.
For us, the pandemic has challenged the resilience of our systems and staff in all departments. The challenge of working from home and co-ordinating a 250-strong person team that’s physically present in more than 10 countries has been problematic, but not insurmountable.
As far as I’m aware, we were one of the first companies in Cyprus to take precautionary measures when Covid-19 first emerged in March and we’ve continued in that vein by extending testing to all staff and their families to ensure our people are taken care of.
To counteract the problem of being unable to operate from our HQ, we integrated robust remote working systems and reorganised how our client support teams were structured in their day-to-day handling of internal and external communications.
Complying with Covid restrictions has been a logistical quagmire as we look after more than a million traders across Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Despite these challenges, we’ve done well and remain fully committed to maintaining our high service standards while improving service features regardless of the difficulties we face.
How do you see financial services evolving as an industry?
Powered by the development of revolutionary financial technology (fintech) innovations in recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of new services that are changing life as we know it.
Challenger banks are a great example of how to use technology to cost-effectively compete with their global, institutional banking peers while also creating powerful tools to benefit consumers. Other technological developments such as the Internet of Things, distributed ledgers, and blockchain offer a route into seamless and even "bankless" payments, while ensuring all transactions are transparent and compliant with all financial regulations. Cryptocurrencies are still largely unregulated, but the technology underpinning all of them is already transforming how financial institutions do business and how regulators see the market.
Exactly how cryptocurrencies will be regulated remains unclear, but distributed ledgers and the concept of using decentralised databases to tighten privacy (while simultaneously improving transparency) has been proven in practice. It’s groundbreaking and has the capacity to transform financial services as an industry.
Practical case studies already include major stock exchanges implementing distributed ledger technology to smooth settlements while logistics and supply chain management companies are using the same technology to streamline storage and shipping.
I see the world moving towards a digitised future where the lines between money, finance, trading, investing, digital property rights, and software are blurred to the consumer’s advantage. Tech applications in trading, settlement, and eCommerce have made it easier for brokers to service their clients at scale while making the financial markets more accessible for consumers.
At BDSwiss, fintech is a tool we leverage to converge the funnel of trading, investment, and banking opportunities into a holistic single offering. We’re currently setting up a new team in Germany to supplement our core operations in Cyprus, as part of a new avenue of operations in the years to come.
Our long-term mission is to build a financial services Swiss army knife, so to speak, offering clients market access that spans trading, asset management, payments, and banking services. The overarching goal is to create a leading financial institution that rivals the larger European powerhouses not by outgrowing them, but by outperforming them in how our clients will benefit: freedom of financial choice, and an outstanding user experience that’s secure and multi-platform.
Only by offering a best-in-class service can we continue to merit our clients’ trust and to win their business for the long-term.
Alexander Oelfke, CEO, BDSwiss Group
Education: European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel and Durham Business School, M.Sc. in Finance. European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel and Rhodes University, B.Sc. in Business Administration/General Management, Finance & Banking
Experience: Over 15 years in management positions in banking, investments, marketing. Since 2018 at BDSwiss.
What milestones did you reach in 2020 and what can we expect from BDSwiss in 2021?
This year was like no other. Still, we achieved several important milestones including launching a host of new ETFs in parallel with direct market access to over 900 stocks. As a result, we empowered our clients to obtain exposure to global equity price movements and to diversify their portfolios during one of the most uncertain times in living memory.
We also strengthened our regulatory position by obtaining an operating licence in Seychelles and bolstered our partner acquisition programme to over 17,500 partners, making it one of the most successful initiatives in the industry. In fact, as a company, we are the industry’s leader with respect to nurturing strong partnership and affiliate agreements globally, especially in regions with rapidly growing trading communities such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Also, led by our head of investment research Marshall Gittler, we revamped our market research portal and bolstered our analyst team. Our clients now have a cleaner and more engaging experience when accessing timely market commentary, thought-provoking editorials, and regular videos posted by our market analysts.
It’s a testament to our global team’s talent and fortitude that they managed to achieve these milestones in the middle of a global pandemic and two lockdowns. I’m enormously proud of all of them.
Looking forward, we intend to offer our clients cost-effective market access that disrupts the incumbent banking monopoly while also equalising market access for individuals with that of wealthier individuals and large corporations. We want to democratise financial market access and allow individuals to access the same services usually reserved for high rollers.
As a partial exclusive for your readers – we’re working towards launching a significant new service feature and introducing a breath of fresh air to the world of retail trading in 2021. I look forward to making an official announcement sometime next year.
To what degree will fintech influence financial services in the coming decade?
Right now, banks are on the back foot, having to adapt to severe market disruptions caused by challenger banks and mobile banking services. In response, novel fintech companies have arrived offering cutting-edge digital solutions to age-old problems. They’ve not won the lion’s share of the market – yet – but technology as a concept is quickly eradicating traditional boundaries to market entry. Being a big bank has never meant so little.
According to market research conducted in Australia, 84% of millennials would consider banking with a tech company such as Google or Apple, as opposed to their High Street bank.
Technology has not only levelled the playing field: it’s also expanded it. Avantgarde technology is already providing breathtaking services for anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection, which includes billions of people in developing countries.
Nowadays, market participants are savvy enough to understand that the digital revolution is creating tangible financial and career opportunities rather than being a simplistic gateway to having fun with social media, online shopping and shiny gadgets.
If the average person is happy to place more trust in their search engine provider than a regulated financial institution with their money, what does that say about the banking industry as a whole?
Fintech is threatening to leave traditional banking redundant and surplus to requirements. I intend to steer BDSwiss into this brave new world full of seamless connectivity and opportunity for everyone and help establish one of the most successful financial institutions in Cyprus and beyond.
For fossil fuels, 2021 will not be easy considering the uncertainty surrounding post-pandemic demand and pressure to shift towards renewable sources. Oil production will continue slowly declining through March 2021, and may rise modestly through year end. The pandemic-caused economic disruption will keep to negatively impact global demand for natural gas, especially from industry.
The next five years will see the energy transition reaching a tipping point. New build renewable energy will cost less than the marginal cost of fossil fuels. Carbon footprints will be viewed as socially unacceptable, within a larger trend for sustainability accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Individuals, companies and countries will seek the quickest and most affordable ways to achieve net-zero, with initiatives such as C40Cities and the EU Green Deal already leading the way. This vector will unleash a wave of innovation aimed at both reducing and removing the world’s emissions.
The scientific machine learning that combines physics-based models with big data will lead to leaner designs, lower operating costs and ultimately clean, affordable energy for all. Carbon-heavy industries, such as oil and gas and industrial manufacturing, will use machine learning and AI technology to dramatically decarbonise their processes.
Many renewable energy projects, e.g. solar and wind, that were postponed by the pandemic are expected to come online in 2021 and lead to a rebound in renewable energy capacity. As a result, in 2021 capacity levels are expected to come close to pre-pandemic numbers. That being said, the combined renewables growth of 2020 and 2021 will be nearly 10% lower than was previously forecast.
Cyprus in particular plans to increase the share of renewable energy sources from 13.9% to 22.9% in the period 2021- 2030. The necessary investments until 2030 are estimated at €13.7 billion. Currently, the three pillars of the national energy strategy include opening the local electricity market by mid-2022; enhancing the electricity interconnection with neighbouring countries by the end of 2023; and restoring natural gas exploration and exploitation activities in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone. Currently, ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum and Total and Eni are revising their plans for their drills to take place in the second half of 2021, but no cancellations have been announced as of the end of 2020.
2021 should also see major advances in preparations for the EastMed gas pipeline connecting East Mediterranean energy resources to mainland Greece via Cyprus and Crete, to which the European Commission has already contributed over €34 million. Following a final investment decision between the countries in 2022, construction of the pipeline is scheduled for completion by 2025.
Another major project is the LNG import terminal in Vassiliko which will cost Cyprus about €290 million. The terminal, which will provide fuel for electricity plants in Cyprus, is expected to reduce the country’s carbon footprint by almost 30% and reduce energy costs by up to 15%. Interestingly, the EU Green Deal sees adopting net-zero emissions by 2050 through at least €1 trillion worth of public and private investment, and gas is no longer central to its future energy needs: to achieve these targets the EU will have to reduce its natural gas consumption by more than 80% by 2050. In November 2020, European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly criticised that gas projects had been previously included on the European Commission’s list of priority energy projects, with EastMed being one of them.
To be continued
Sources: forbes.com, hrtrendinstitute.com, gtm-plus.com, cyprus-mail.com, bloombergquint.com, financialmirror.com, finch.com, nnip.com, unctad.org, oecd-ilibrary.org, globalwebindex.com, contactpigeon.com, virtualreality-news.net, eiu.com, statcdn.com, ec.europa.eu, www3.weforum.org, www.pwc.com.cy, zdnet.com, financesonline.com, rise.org.cy, dgepcd.gov.cy, bbc.com, enterprisesurveys.org, classeditori.it
До марта 2020 года безработица на Кипре держалась на уровне 6% и казалось, что государство находится на пороге введения минимальной зарплаты. Однако из-за пандемии стало очевидно, что к этому вопросу власти вернутся еще не скоро.
Правительство начнет обсуждать введение минимального размера оплаты труда (МРОТ) только тогда, когда безработица снизится до 5%. Сегодня ее уровень достиг 8% в основном, из-за серьезного удара по туристическому сектору, и нет никаких гарантий, что эта цифра окончательная.
После последнего заседания заместитель официального представителя правительства Панайотис Сендонас заявил, что социальный диалог о возможном внедрении минимального размера оплаты труда может начаться только тогда, когда будут достигнуты условия полной занятости. Накануне пандемии Министерство труда, социального обеспечения и социального страхования организовало исследование. В его выводах говорится о том, как МРОТ можно рассчитать, как он может быть введен на национальном уровне, какое влияние это окажет на рынок труда, социальную политику и другие сферы экономики. Но в результате пандемии условия занятости, которые ранее демонстрировали положительную динамику, существенно изменились.
На сегодняшний день всего шесть государств Евросоюза не имеют фиксированного МРОТ, среди них и Кипр. В республике гарантированное минимальное жалованье введено только для некоторых специальностей, и оно не менялось с 2012 года. Кроме того, 55% трудящихся не подписывали с работодателем коллективное соглашение. Хотя формально правительство не отказалось от перспективы введения МРОТ, но стало очевидно, что к этому вопросу власти вернутся еще не скоро.
Министр энергетики Наташа Пилидис рассказала членам парламентского комитета по энергетике о планах своего ведомства по разведке углеводородов, буровым работам и комплексному планированию добычи природного газа.
По ее словам, буровая деятельность в ИЭЗ Кипра запланирована на вторую половину 2021 года. Министр отметила, что это положительное решение для Кипра, так как многие крупные компании по всему миру отказались от планов по разведке.
«Тот факт, что программа продолжается в 2021 году и начинается обсуждение деталей, это очень хорошо для нас», — сказала она. Однако Пилидис добавила, что пандемия продолжает влиять на процессы во всем мире и это необходимо принимать во внимание. Она выразила надежду, что во второй половине этого года условия позволят продолжить исследовательскую деятельность.
Отвечая на вопросы парламентариев, она сказала, что перенос начала бурения с 2020 года не повлиял на график работ. Как и было запланировано ранее, Кипр сможет получить свой первый природный газ в 2025-2026 годах. На данном этапе, по ее словам, никаких задержек с этим нет. «Если все будет хорошо с точки зрения пандемии, мы надеемся придерживаться этих графиков», — сказала Пилидис.
Источник: cyprus-mail.com
In 2020, for all kinds of businesses and organisations around the world working remotely became the new normal that they will continue to adapt to in 2021. Leaders have to rethink how their organisations operate, how staff are connected and supervised, whether the business model is still sustainable or their office space appropriate, etc. One of the implications is embracing the “anywhere operations” model, i.e. for the business to be accessed, delivered and enabled anywhere, which is now key to survival. In this model, customers, professionals, and partners all operate in physically remote and digital-driven, cloud-based environments.
This does not always mean cancelling physical space altogether, but it is being reconsidered. In the "new-normal" office space, social distancing protocols will have to be strictly upheld. This will change the design, e.g. more contactless and surveillance technologies; the work schedule, e.g. more flexibility to avoid overcrowding; the office non-work routine, e.g. no more buffet catering; and so on.
At the same time, some companies are abandoning offices altogether, having realised that their teams may as well work remotely, and redirecting the money into a more powerful IT infrastructure instead. New applications for the freed-up space will need to be developed, which will lead to major reshuffle on the real estate market.
Then, of course, there is a home office, another pandemic-driven change in how people work and live. With employees working from home, advantages such as having a nice office space or free lunches are not relevant anymore. New types of support are required, such as having the right office equipment, or flexible schedule to accommodate childcare, and new types of administration, such as powerful and secure IT systems, or enhanced remote monitoring.
CHANGE OF PRIORITIES
The pandemic-caused changes in how we work are definitely broader than just going remote. With less socialising and fewer leisure activities to engage in, for many, Covid-19 has triggered reassessment of work-life balance and, most importantly, the meaning of what they do.
Young (but not only) professionals across countries and industries are switching companies and sectors, retraining, or becoming entrepreneurs. There is a trend to have more purpose and meaning in a job, and companies that can offer neither will struggle to attract talent and customers. Another increasingly important factor brought to light during the pandemic is whether a company is aware of the environmental impact of its activities and works to make those more sustainable.
Employees as well as clients are looking at organisations to contribute to the required changes in society. As a result, ethical leadership and embracing the corporate social responsibility policies will come to the forefront. It is hard to say whether these changes will touch Cyprus, because just a couple of years ago researchers studying CSR applications in Cyprus noted that “Cypriot SMEs… are very reluctant to adopt formal CSR policies due to a perceived risk of increased company costs (without tangible financial profits).” In other words, Cypriot firms are still to be convinced that CSR is an investment and not merely a cost. Time will tell whether new generation of workers, now coming to the market, will be able to shift this perspective.
INTERNET OF…
With the increasing mass of devices connected to the internet, from smartwatches to surveillance systems to home appliances, it is clear that the Internet of Things (IoT) is no longer a futuristic idea but a reality. Even in Cyprus, which is not particularly known as a technologically advanced country, there are intentions for smart cities and real-time integrated infrastructure in the public sector, healthcare, transportation, and other fields.
What comes next is the Internet of Behaviours (IoB). A build-up on the IoT, this next stage is about using the "digital dust" of data coming from all those connected "things" and turning it into information used to influence our everyday behaviours in both digital and physical world.
These data come from an abundance of sources, e.g. commercial customer data; citizen data processed by publicsector and government agencies; social media; facial recognition; location tracking, etc. A smartphone is an ideal tool to track the user’s both online and offline activities. To brands, this gives information about one’s interests, dislikes, political preferences, and purchasing patterns, i.e. the in-depth, personalised understanding of their clients whose future behaviour they will be able to predict or, in fact, influence.
According to Gartner, by 2023 individual activities of 40% of the global population will be tracked digitally in order to influence behaviours, and by 2026, over 50% of the world’s population will be exposed to at least one IoB programme, whether that comes from the government, or a private company.
All these raise some very serious questions about user privacy and cybersecurity. The IoB approach, interconnecting personal data with decision-making, demands change of mostly pre-digital cultural and legal norms, and governments around the world only begin to look into these matters.
To be continued
Sources: forbes.com, hrtrendinstitute.com, gtm-plus.com, cyprus-mail.com, bloombergquint.com, financialmirror.com, finch.com, nnip.com, unctad.org, oecd-ilibrary.org, globalwebindex.com, contactpigeon.com, virtualreality-news.net, eiu.com, statcdn.com, ec.europa.eu, www3.weforum.org, www.pwc.com.cy, zdnet.com, financesonline.com, rise.org.cy, dgepcd.gov.cy, bbc.com, enterprisesurveys.org, classeditori.it
Successful Business talks to Point Nine, a company that focuses on providing trade and transaction reporting services to legal entities across the globe. With offices in Cyprus and London, Point Nine collaborates with both buy-side and sell-side financial firms, service providers, and corporations to help them ensure high quality and accurate reporting to remain compliant. We speak with Andreas Roussos (pictured), Theo Mallas, and Christina Barbash about the today and tomorrow of Regulatory Technology, known as RegTech, and the challenges and solutions in a complex environment of multi-reporting to local and EU regulators.
The compliance burden on companies increases every year. What are the fields of compliance that could be managed by special software instead of human operators? Are there any complicated, timeconsuming processes that could be easily replaced by RegTech?
There is no single reporting regime that can be done only by humans. You need at least a good knowledge of Excel, but the problem is multilayered. Let me introduce the market outlook. The compliance market is huge and involves pharmaceutical companies that work on vaccines, companies that manufacture arms, explosives, airplanes. In these cases, we have healthcare regulations, regulations in security. But let’s focus on financial services.
There have been many examples in the financial service sector when regulators tried to figure out what was happening exactly at any given time. The year of 2008 is the best example of all. During the crisis, several banks were on the brink of collapse. The regulators, that is, the governments, had to make a choice – whether to use people’s money to save those banks. However, no one considered what was going to happen if the bank collapsed. They had no idea about outstanding trades and if there was going to be a systemic risk. At the same time, financial markets were never transparent enough for an average person to invest. We always had a problem with transparency, with regulators getting accurate and timely data to better understand and control the environment.
Besides all that, there were many cases of fraud. We also saw problems with clearly identifying the source and destination of incoming and outgoing funds. Whether you are one of the biggest banks in the world or a small broker in Cyprus, more or less you have to report the same data. The number one problem organisations have is internal, where they need to answer a number of questions. Do we have all necessary data? Where do we store these data? Can we correctly interpret the data according to all the requirements?
There is also the external part. You need to send all those data in a correct format to various regulators. We live in a free-trade world, where entities can be established all over Europe, for example. The problem with Europe is that you have European regulators and local regulators. Usually, they don’t have the same goals; they should, but they don’t.
Companies that are in the financial services have approximately 16,000 data fields they need to complete. Much reporting relies not only on the company itself but also on the entities this company trades with. You also have reporting that entails accounting principles, taxation, money laundering, monitoring of trading transactions, and the list goes on. That’s why we witness the rise of RegTech, which derived from FinTech.
Companies should also work on understanding internal data completely. It doesn’t really matter how good your technology is, if the input of data is inaccurate. In that case, the output is inaccurate as well. Take simple data entering in Excel, for example. One may be excellent in Excel, but if wrong data are inserted, the calculations will be wrong.
We live in a complex environment; it is essential for the regulators to be able to tell average people that it is safe to put their money in pension funds, invest in a stock exchange. People need to know that their money is safe and no one is going to deceive them. Are we close to that? No. It is a relatively new market, the institutions have had their own data and internal software that was never built to carry the reporting in these volumes. We have a regulatory reporting business to become the future.
You have mentioned one very important aspect, that technological progress should be seen not only from the company’s position but also from the government's. What if reporting is being done, but there is not enough capacity to analyse all those data?
That’s also one of the main issues. Two years ago, Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England gave a speech saying, if I recall correctly, that £8 billion pounds in the U.K. banking sector was lost just because the reporting was not efficient. By the time regulators receive all that vast amount of data, process and analyse it, make their partial conclusion, they have to ask for more data.
Regulations impose on entities the obligations to submit reports continuously: daily, monthly, quarterly, semiannually, annually. The regulated entities in any sector need to make these data available and regulators should have access to inspect them. The daily checks or prescheduled checks don’t allow them to be flexible and this is the biggest problem. There are the data stored and protected within the company; the data needed by third parties; and the data from service providers. Moreover, for the same entity, you can have 2-3 regulators. Basically, you have the same data stored for years in several different infrastructures which is unproductive, since you asked.
Would you say that the future for Fintech is to give limited access to the regulator so they can access companies if necessary?
If you ask me, it would make everyone’s life easier and it would be more efficient. The problem is that this industry is changing too fast. It is a very difficult task to achieve unless there is a coordinated effort from all stakeholders. A typical entity, a bank, might have data in 20-30 different internal solutions, databases, software. Such change requires planning and time to be put in effect.
What is your outlook for 2021? What are the inevitable changes to be implemented in the financial regulation industry?
The pandemic has changed everything. If you are in the financial sector, if you are a regulated entity, you have people that need to work under specific rules, in the specific environment. Now all these people work from home. I think the pandemic will shift everything towards work-fromhome; I see more of a “bring your own device” trend, and we also need to see adjustments in regulations. We will not go back to how we were, even with vaccines. I expect adjustments in the regulations, but I believe the changes will take place slowly.
HOW THE CYPRIOT-BASED FINTECH FIRM, POINT NINE, GREW IN 2020 AMIDST THE PANDEMIC AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THEM
Andreas Roussos, Partner, Christina Barbash, Business Development Manager, Theo Mallas, Head of Marketing & Corporate Culture. Photo: Successful Business
1. Tell us about Point Nine.
In its essence, Point Nine is a data processing and management firm. Our proprietary solution is designed to collect information from different sources, process, and create a report that contains all information needed and presented in the format demanded by the European Securities and Markets Authorities and National Competency Authorities. In sim Corporate Culture - ple terms, we help financial institutions remain compliant and transparent to the law they belong to. Aside from the quality of our service/ product, Point Nine aims to become a driving force of market change and reform. Our team is our strength. We are proud of our team’s industry knowledge and are committed to keeping up with the latest changes in regulations. We are smart, fun, and driven, however, we also take our community involvement and responsibility seriously.
2. Has Point Nine been affected by the Pandemic?
We are fortunate to have not been affected by the pandemic performancewise. In fact, we’ve seen a double-digit growth in terms of client acquisition to date and nearly doubled our team in 2020 amidst the pandemic.
3. That is an impressive growth considering the circumstances. What were your actions leading to such growth?
Well, at times of chaos and uncertainty, it is important to safeguard the business and focus on ethically growing it under those circumstances one has no control over. In our case, as a tech company and cloud-based, we’ve always had a flexible approach to working remotely as we have team members across Europe, and our line of work requires little to zero physical interaction, therefore we were not affected by the measures taken by the local government. However, we did have to comfort our clients that their data were protected, and the workload sustained as usual.
In regard to growing our clientele, we revisited our roots, our core values and the value we bring to our clients. With such focus, we turned to digital communication platforms with an updated messaging focusing on the value we bring to customers and kept the messages targeted.
This approach helped us look internally and focus on not only supporting the team’s safety and the safety of their loved ones but also maintaining their overall well-being. We established weekly group calls merely for social engagement and chats not related to work while the local team arranged off-site activities such as dinners and other bonding experiences offering each other support.
4. What distinguishes Point Nine from its competitors?
What makes Point Nine stand out from its competitors is our ability to access data from various systems, including customers’ in-house solutions. Our architecture has an automated way of fetching, receiving, or submitting enriched data while helping the increased accuracy testing, performing advanced regulatory reconciliations, testing reference data, and having a proper control framework.
Regulators demand that financial firms, service providers, and corporations submit timely and accurate data to trade repositories, approved reporting mechanisms and national competent authorities.
Point Nine in-house technology is a scalable regulatory solution utilised by many firms: Point Nine have processed and reported more than 4.5 billion reports. The company has a team of industry experts that specialises in regulatory reporting, equipped with proprietary cloud-based technology.
Point Nine technology is designed to help firms successfully meet their regulatory reporting requirements and remain compliant with: EMIR, MiFID ll, MiFIR, SFTR, FinfraG, ASIC, MAS.
KEY LEARNINGS:
Prioritise authentic, transparent communication with clients and employees.
Go digital with a fine-tuned message.
Reassure your clients.
Additional measures to help Cyprus health system become more efficient, impactful and in line with best practices from leading health systems across the world.
It has been over eight months now since Covid-19 first appeared in Cyprus, shaping a new reality and transforming the way we conduct our lives and businesses. Practical measures for our health system should help manage health crises and future Covid-19 waves in a more decisive, planned and controlled manner.
• Building surge capacity and ensuring better use of available hospital capacity • Re-designing the role of the retail pharmacy
• Using proven health technologies and analytics to identify and support Covid-19 patients and population at risk
• Enabling and reinforcing the role of the Ministry of Health’s public health team.
Covid-19 is a major challenge to our health system but also presents a unique opportunity for our policymakers to address structural or entrenched challenges and create the healthcare sector of tomorrow.
Looking beyond the hospital to the social determinants of health
The accelerated rise of chronic conditions and their heavy socioeconomic burden have been shifting the sector’s emphasis from treatment in the short term to prevention and management. It is imperative to recognise that disease prevention, management and well-being extend beyond the hospital: social determinants such as education, mental health, income, nutrition lifestyle, and housing all have a major impact on health outcomes. Accordingly, health should be defined in a broader term by including these social determinants in the care continuum and hence – in line with the first point above – the emphasis should be on increasing collaboration across all health stakeholders.
Various health systems have already moved into this direction and could serve as inspiration to newly formed systems such as the General Health System. For example, in the US many health organisations are adding nutritionists, behavioural health specialists, social workers, and community workers to their care teams alongside doctors. According to a recent PwC HRI study, extended care teams that include nutritionists and social and community health workers could save the system $1.2 million for every 10,000 patients served (PwC HRI, ROI for primary care: Building the dream team, Oct 2016).
Safeguarding the viability of GHS, protecting against system abuse and preserving clinical quality
One of the biggest challenges of the still-infant GHS is to continue to evolve its control mechanisms to: (a) detect & prevent abuse of the system and (b) preserve the quality of services provision so that to ensure viability of the system. To minimise abuse and errors, the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO) could invest in data analytics to be able to detect suspicious activity patterns including doctor referral patterns. Also, the organisation could carry out clinical audits and ‘mystery patient’ exercises aimed at GHS providers and implement harsh penalties for any doctors abusing the system. Acting now while the GHS is still in its infancy is important in order to encourage the right behaviours and develop the appropriate culture of respect to the system by all participants.
In order to preserve the quality of services provision, in line with international best practices, an independent organisation would need to set up quality standards, clinical protocols, KPIs, and follow an ongoing process of monitoring and measuring all GHS providers against these indicators. Measuring quality in the context of health is not an easy thing to do. Following the Donabedian model (also used by NICE UK), the measures used to assess and compare the quality of healthcare providers are classified as either:
1) a structure measure (the environment or setting, e.g. ratio of patients to doctors);
2) a process measure (the activity carried out, e.g. the share of people with diabetes who had their blood sugar tested and controlled), or
3) an outcome measure (the end result or impact, e.g. surgical mortality rates, readmissions, infections, etc.). For a comprehensive and detailed assessment of the quality of health services, all dimensions of care need to be evaluated.
Continue to invest in skills and infrastructure to strengthen and differentiate our health product and promote it in the global market
To be able to make our health product more competitive on an international stage and also serve the patients in the best possible way, our policymakers need to provide the right incentives to secure a steady supply of high-calibre skills and staff. For instance, in Cyprus we have a shortage of nurses - 5.2 per 1,000 people vs 8.4 in the EU, while the ratio of 1.5 nurses for every doctor was among the lowest in the EU (State of Health report on Cyprus, OECD, 2017). Enhancing the role of nurses, introducing specialisation and reimbursement levels which will be based on experience and academic qualifications, creating more nursing courses at local universities, offering access to quality training to nurses and linking it to the renewal of their nursing licence, introducing a consistent evaluation framework are all means of securing a steady supply of knowledge nurses.
Creating a strong brand for clinical quality and ensuring that Cyprus has a ready supply of highcalibre staff, alone are not enough to make our health product competitive. For Cyprus to become a competitive destination for medical tourism in relation to certain suitable specialties (e.g. rehabilitation, general surgery, bariatric, plastic surgery, etc.), the state should also take a leading role in putting in place the right enabling infrastructure. For instance, offering certain financial/tax incentives to foreign doctors, actively promoting the Cyprus health sector internationally, forming strategic partnerships with international medical concierge and tour-operator companies, investing in business relationships with targeted leading university hospitals, and subsidising flights to create better connectivity would all help strengthen our competitive position abroad.
Using technology to achieve financial efficiencies and provide better care
Virtual care solutions can help improve outcomes and reduce costs, expand access to services especially for remote populations, improve utilisation management and radically promote preventive and chronic disease management. Globally, consumers are starting to adopt virtual health – with 16% of global consumers surveyed already owning a wearable device that monitors their health continuously in real time, and 31% planning to own one (PwC Global: Total Retail Survey, 2017). Wi-Fi-enabled scales, mobile apps for chronic disease monitoring, and wireless biometric sensors mean that care has become more proactive and is no longer tied to the hospital or to the physician’s office.
It would be easy for the GHS, being a single-payer system, to work out reimbursement rates for specific approved virtual health solutions based on the current fee-for-service catalogue. Alternatively, the MoH could fund and provide – through partnerships with established global tech providers – virtual health initiatives for targeted chronic conditions. For instance, Netherlands-based Royal Philips partnered with Changi General Hospital in Singapore to help patients manage their heart conditions at home. Patients were given a weight scale and a blood pressure monitor to check their weight, pulse and blood pressure readings daily. A personal tablet wirelessly captured the readings and uploaded them to a central monitoring system. Nurses remotely monitored patients and intervened when care was needed. After one year of the pilot programme, the length of stay for heart failure-related admissions was reduced by 67% and the total cost of related care dropped by 42% (PwC HRI, Global top health industry issues: Defining the healthcare of the future, 2018).
Кабинет Министров 13 января одобрил меры по поддержке арендаторов, среди которых рассрочка и отмена арендной платы для компаний и самозанятых, а также налоговые льготы для арендодателей.
Двухмесячная отмена платежей
Распространяется на январь-февраль или февраль-март (в тех случаях, когда аренда за январь уже внесена). Арендатор, например, компания или самозанятый, приостановившие свою деятельность из-за карантина, может за этот период оплатить только 30% аренды. Остальные 70% оплаты необходимо будет распределить на период до февраля 2022 года.
Отмена оплаты аренды правительственных помещений
Частные арендаторы, снимающие помещения у государства или полугосударственных организаций, полностью освобождаются от арендной платы.
Налоговые льготы для арендодателей
Для арендодателей, которые на 30-50% снижают оплату своим арендаторам (как физическим, так и юридическим лицам) на период с января по март, будет действовать льгота на подоходный налог. Владелец недвижимости также будет освобождаться от взносов на оборону на тот период, на который он снизит арендную плату.
