FAQ - Financial parteners

1) Which kind financial partners can join Polaris?

Polaris is designed to support the operations of commercial banks and factoring companies, but there are no limits to the type of financial operators that can adhere, if their objective is to invest financial resources in short-term commercial assets. In principle, commercial companies can also participate as investors, within the limits allowed by the regulation in force, while the participation of individuals is excluded.

2) How do one join Polaris?

The process of joining Polaris begins with a preliminary expression of interest, which can also be made through a contact request initiated from the our website, under the contacts section. The Polaris team takes charge of the request and arranges a session to illustrate the operation of the platform and to examine the contractual architecture on which the community is based. At completion of this phase, Polaris’ team opens an account on Polaris to the applicant and initiates the onboarding and accession process, which is fully digital and takes between 20 and 30 minutes.

3) How much does it cost to join Polaris?

Financial partners pay a periodic fee for the use of the platform, the amount of which is commensurate with the size of the credit facility that the partner renders available to Buyers participating in the platform.

4) Who is my client if I join Polaris?

On Polaris, the financial partner’s customers are the Buyers on whom the partner set up a credit facility and the suppliers from whom the partner purchases trade receivables from the Buyer. If the partner is also active on the secondary market, the other financial partners on the platform are also potential customers of the partner. From a credit perspective, the only counterparty at risk is the Buyer in its capacity as assigned debtor. From an economic and regulatory perspective, all potential assignors (suppliers and other financial partners) are customers.

5) Why choose Polaris and not another SCF platform / programme?

Polaris offers an innovative concept of supply chain finance platform, based on a community structure and on the sharing of a contractual architecture common to all members. Operating on Polaris means moving in a free market space, governed by transparency, fairness and safety. Polaris also breaks down the barriers to entry into the supply chain finance market, enabling financial partners who are normally excluded from this market, for reasons of size or lack of proprietary technical solutions, to adhere. Finally, the structure of Polaris ensures that the investments in commercial assets made by financial partners within the platform represents a very modest risk index and substantially coincides only with the risk of default of the Buyer.

6) What benefits will Polaris bring to my organisation?

For the financial partners, Polaris represents a financial employment channel characterised by the good quality of the counterparties, the absence of risks other than the default of the counterparties and the total digitalisation of operational processes, so as to ensure an excellent cost/benefit ratio. In addition, Polaris offers to financial partners the possibility to also support small companies, without having to bear the acquisition and contracting costs with them, thanks to the platform's sharing paradigm.

7) How is Polaris different from other platforms?

The main difference is the shared contractual architecture, which also allows information and processes to be shared, avoiding the replication of worthless activities (e.g. the replication of onboarding for each individual financial partner). The adhesion to Polaris is a key factor in the relationship towards all other adherents. From Buyer's point of view, Polaris is an instrument that allows to manage supply chain finance programmes autonomously, without devolving management to individual financial partners and, therefore, without creating structural dependencies on those partners.