Dossier on a Counterparty: How Automated Due Diligence Helps Russian Firms Find Overseas Partners
As Russia expands trade ties with Eastern markets, businesses are facing a practical challenge: how to assess potential international partners quickly and reliably. This week, the platform Kontur.Fokus launched an express due diligence service for counterparties from China, aiming to compress what once took days or weeks into a matter of minutes.
All the Nuances in One Report
Entering into a trade deal without verifying the reliability of a foreign counterparty exposes a company to serious financial and reputational risks. Gathering relevant information could previously take weeks or even months. “Finding this data independently is extremely difficult. Not all Chinese sources are accessible from Russia, translation takes time, and decisions often have to be made immediately,” explains Anton Lomovsky, head of the Kontur.Fokus project.
Previously, Kontur.Fokus provided clients with a standard report on Chinese companies. It included registration details, tax and credit ratings, as well as visualized analytics for the specific company and its industry as a whole. However, generating that report in Russian took five days.
The new service delivers an express report within minutes. It contains the same core data as the detailed version, except for visualizations, and adds media coverage of the company under review with sentiment analysis indicating whether the tone is positive or negative.
AI as a Driver of Foreign Trade
The express check is available in the web version of the service. An API solution allows companies to integrate the data directly into business processes in machine-readable form. Artificial intelligence aggregates information from Chinese sources and translates it into Russian or English, reducing both linguistic and operational barriers.
China is Russia’s largest trading partner. For that reason, a high-quality tool to analyze partners from the country is a critical element in developing foreign economic activity. For Russian small and medium-sized enterprises, such solutions simplify verification of foreign counterparties and reduce operational risk. Fewer unreliable suppliers enter supply chains, supporting the growth of non-commodity exports and technology imports.
Retrospective
The market for digital due diligence services, including checks on foreign counterparties, has expanded significantly over the past five years. In 2021, Kontur.Fokus issued business intelligence reports on companies from 99 countries engaged in active trade with Russia.
In 2022, the state digital platform Moi eksport (My Export) launched the service Poisk partnera. Proverka zarubezhnogo kontragenta (Partner Search. Foreign Counterparty Verification).
In 2024, VTB introduced its own solution for verifying partners from China.
In 2025, SberAnalitika rolled out B2B International, a service designed to help companies verify and select counterparties from more than 90 countries.
Service development is progressing not only by expanding geographic coverage but also by deepening analytical capabilities and integrating data into existing corporate systems.
Transparency as the Foundation of Trust
The new solution from Kontur.Fokus marks an important step in expanding the platform’s international data capabilities. It strengthens the security of foreign economic activity and supports the country’s digital economy infrastructure. The case also encourages other market players to develop similar products focused on the CIS and Global South markets.
The expansion of such IT products addresses a strategic objective: improving national economic competitiveness by digitizing core business processes. A digital economy that can adapt quickly to geopolitical shifts provides companies with timely data to make informed decisions.
