CleverChain, the RegTech firm behind AI agents for due diligence and anti-money laundering, has partnered with Cedar Rose, a Coface company, to automate due diligence processes across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
The commercial partnership will see the companies jointly pursue customer opportunities across MENA, with the collaboration also potentially extending into selected markets in the UK and Asia.
The two businesses are bringing together complementary capabilities. CleverChain adds intelligence orchestration and policy-driven automation, with its platform able to reconcile evidence from multiple sources, resolve entities across different languages and naming conventions, and assess findings against individual customers’ risk thresholds.
Cedar Rose provides regional business intelligence covering corporate records, ownership and control structures, credit assessments and investigative intelligence. Its information is gathered locally and normalised to international reporting standards.
The resulting assessments remain traceable to the underlying records and the data provider responsible for supplying them, while the final decision remains with the customer.
Due diligence across MENA can involve varying levels of registry coverage and disclosure standards between jurisdictions. Corporate ownership can also involve free-zone entities, holding structures and nominee arrangements, while companies and individuals may appear under different transliterations of the same name.
The partnership aims to combine Cedar Rose’s regional information with CleverChain’s automated reconciliation capabilities within a single workflow. Use cases will include corporate verification and know-your-business (KYB), ownership and control mapping including ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) identification, enhanced due diligence, third-party and supplier onboarding, and ongoing monitoring.
The collaboration also extends into industries outside financial services. Industrial businesses operating across MENA often need to assess distributors, agents, suppliers and joint-venture partners, with Cedar Rose’s records covering sectors including construction, energy, transport and logistics.
The companies said these capabilities could support procurement, legal and compliance teams assessing third parties, building on automation CleverChain has already tested in the defence and automotive sectors.
CleverChain’s platform is designed to be source-agnostic, selecting data providers and models according to factors including jurisdiction, risk scenario and use case. Each provider retains its own contractual relationship and commercial identity, with Cedar Rose joining CleverChain’s existing panel of specialist and global information providers.
CleverChain chief growth officer Ermanno Ciarrocchi said, “Cedar Rose produces evidence that holds up locally, in the original language and at source. We turn that evidence into an assessment that holds up in front of an auditor or a regulator, calibrated to the customer’s own policy rather than to a generic risk model. The customer sees one coherent outcome that informs and streamlines its decision, whether concerning a customer onboarding or a supplier risk assessment.”
Cedar Rose chief sales officer Paul Costers said, “Cedar Rose has built its reputation by producing reliable business intelligence in markets where information is difficult to obtain and to verify. As a Coface company, we combine that regional expertise with the reach and institutional strength of a global player in credit risk management. Working with CleverChain creates an additional route for clients to put our information and investigative capabilities to work, in a way that complements how they already use us.”
Read the full CleverChain announcement here.
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