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Home » Discovering risk and threat in financial services: Cerved case

Discovering risk and threat in financial services: Cerved case

logo-cerved

BUSINESS SECTOR: FINANCIAL SERVICES
YEAR: 2017-2018

In 2018, Cerved, a leading business information provider in Italy and one of the main rating agencies in Europe, partnered with LARUS to enhance their Graph4You platform

Graph4You is a graph-based data platform that helps with financial risk assessment, anti-fraud detection, reliability in procurement, financial investigation, and competitor scouting.

The technology behind the solution is based on a Neo4j graph database, which collects various data sources from within Cerved, such as geo-localised information of people and companies, real estate data, business ownerships, and financial data. The Neo4j cluster contains over 45 million nodes and 100 million relationships.

Goals and Objectives

The objective of the project was to add new capabilities to Graph4You by implementing a custom algorithm and allowing users to query and navigate through the Italian business network to discover connections between entities or get the corporate linkages of companies and individuals. 

The goal was also to extend the current algorithm in Neo4j to satisfy complex business queries between companies using a customised version of the weighted shortest path algorithms.

The  solution

LARUS, with its expertise in graph databases and data management, was the ideal partner for Cerved in this project. The company’s experience and know-how proved to be a key factor in the success of the project. 

LARUS implemented a highly customizable algorithm for risk evaluation that can explore a lot of connections at scale. Connections and weights might represent, for example, credit lines, shares, and their financial impact on companies.

With Graph4You, users can query and navigate through the Italian business network to discover connections between entities or get the corporate linkages of companies and individuals. The algorithm developed by LARUS also allows users to discover the weighted distance between pairs of nodes or between a node and a customer list (e.g. blacklist, whitelist, prospect).

Benefit

In conclusion, the partnership between Cerved and LARUS has resulted in a powerful tool for financial risk assessment and investigation, allowing users to easily discover hidden relationships among entities stored in the graph and highlighting potential issues. The customised algorithm and advanced querying capabilities make Graph4You a valuable asset for any financial services organisation. 

Cerved’s mission is to provide businesses and professionals with accurate and reliable information, and with the help of LARUS, they have been able to take their platform to the next level, providing even more value to their customers.