Introduction
Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) was started in 1966 and is located in Friday Harbor, WA. BERI is a private company that is classified as an insurance company and manages comprehensive rankings, forecasts, and analyses in over 140 countries around the world (Skipper and Kwon, 2007, p.167). Their customers are mainly commercial banks and companies which are involved in international business. The company provides several proprietary services and the exactness of its forecasts has allowed the company to build a sturdy global client base. The company has distributed their work on research, production, and editing to different locations and they obtain most of the publications from all over the world in different languages using the internet. BERI is divided into two permanent teams of professionals that offer country rankings and qualitative analyses. One of the teams assesses political status in countries and the other team provides views on the working environment. BERI does not disclose the identity of its customers, team members, or analysts, hence maintaining objectivity in the forecasts and analyses (BERI, 2011).
The functions of BERI entail searching for information, assessing the information, identifying critical issues, and forecasting possible upcoming progress. This practice is for the single-client and multi-client projects and the company translates the information to intelligence and upcoming progress in any country.
The following are types of services that are under the Quick Response Country Reports System (BERI, 2011):
Retrieval
BERI’s analysts recover available information from the company’s information system and they supplement such information using research at the public offices, libraries, or BERI’s international system of intelligence sources.
Analysis
After the retrieval of the critical information for the country is acquired, the company’s analyst interprets the information and gives an overview of the real status, actual practices, cultural features, and some other important factors.
Forecasts
The piece of information collected by the analyst and suggested predictions are assessed by the company’s C.E.O before they are finally presented to the client. This procedure, including the C.E.O’s perspective on the current situation and possible future progress, guarantees optimal value before they are presented to the client.
Concerning initiatives in the area of governance, BERI is a private company that provides analysis for the business setting and gathers several qualitative indices such as operation risk index and political risk index derived from qualitative assessments carried out by scholars and political analysts (Capela, 2012, p.64). Through a programmed quantitative system processed for several years, Business Environment Risk Intelligence offers special and comprehensive rankings which determine the ability of the country to remain updated on expenses. BERI as well examines the qualitative factors and readiness to pay principal and interest and their method for qualitative analysis offers a viewpoint that is cautiously monitored for factual accuracy, the intelligibility of presentation, and uniformity with previous performance and status (Suder, 2004, p.456).
Dealing with lending business or providing credit to clients out of the country entails risk. This risk has increasingly occurred in several instances but reduced in others. Business Environment Risk Intelligence employs a range of complex variables, always different from those used in the internal operations, to solve issues such as whether central banks are efficiently handling the issue of foreign exchange demands, whether a change in the country policy limits the outflow of exchangeable currency, and if some companies or businesses are offered special exchange rates.
References List
BERI, 2011, Business Environment Risk Intelligence, Web.
Capela, J 2012, Import/Export Kit For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Skipper, H and Kwon, B 2007, Risk management and insurance: perspectives in a global economy, Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey.
Suder, M 2004, Terrorism and the international business environment: the security-business nexus, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, MA.
