2023: A Year of Unprecedented Success 

Reflecting on the past year, it’s clear that 2023 marked an extraordinary period of growth within the trade digitization space and for our organization, marked by the issuance of nearly 140,000 Bolero electronic Bills of Lading (eBLs). This milestone underscores our unwavering commitment to improving global trade practices and cements our leadership role in the digital trade documentation sector. 

Strategic Partnerships and Major Contributions 

Our path to achievement has been significantly enriched through collaborations with our valued partners. Major contributions came from two key alliances in the shipping space, in which both added significant volumes and set a base for long term growth, playing pivotal roles in our mission to innovate and streamline trade documentation processes. These partnerships highlight our shared dedication to driving forward with innovation and operational efficiency. 

Analysing Our Growth 

The record numbers achieved in 2023 were driven by our relentless pursuit of innovation, our focus on customer-centric solutions, and the strength of our strategic partnerships. This trajectory of growth is not only a testament to our past achievements but also a strong foundation for the future. 

2024: Off to a Stellar Start 

As we move forward into 2024, our momentum is stronger than ever, with the initial months showcasing remarkable achievements that forecast an exceptional year ahead. Fueled by our relentless drive for innovation and a steadfast commitment to delivering unparalleled service, we are poised for unprecedented success and continued leadership in our industry. 

The beginning of 2024 has seen a significant increase in activity compared to the same period last year, with our volumes more than doubling in the first two months. This surging growth rate of over 100% year-on-year sets a promising tone for the rest of the year and reaffirming our trajectory towards achieving new heights. 

The Road Ahead: Embracing the Future with Bolero 

Reflecting on 2023’s milestones and looking at the fantastic start to 2024, we are filled with gratitude for our customers, partners, and the entire Bolero and wider WiseTech team. Your trust and dedication have been paramount to our achievements. With an eye towards the future, we invite you to join us on this exciting journey as we continue to redefine global trade, one digital solution at a time. 

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Corporates engaged in international trade are all too frequently stuck with manual methods despite advancing digitisation in many other areas of professional life.

This manual approach to trade finance transaction handling not only consumes the time of skilled employees, it also undermines agility at a time when exporters and importers face enormous pressure from high inflation, rising interest rates, the disruptions of the Ukraine war and the continuing imbalance between supply and demand in global markets. Chinese lockdowns also continue to cause major disruptions.

With so much unpredictability affecting trade and its financial supply chain, there are definite advantages for corporates that accelerate digitisation to streamline their trade finance processes and enable faster and more effective decision-making.

What corporates and their staff need is end-to-end visibility of trade transactions from one pane of glass instead of multiple portals and methods of communication.

Banks need to support or provide all-in-one trade portals

Solutions are available that have all these capabilities and more. All it takes is for banks to deploy or support them. They come as trade portal platforms that digitise trade finance instruments and documents to give corporate customers that critical level of visibility right across the ecosystem of participating banks, financial organisations and counterparties in each transaction. The added capacity to expand networks beyond a one-to-one connection means banks can provide customers with new capabilities that win their continued loyalty in a cost-efficient way. Digitisation of the customer experience and advanced transaction-management through trade portals should therefore become priorities for banks.

Corporates need a consolidated view and the ability to manage their open account transactions and letters of credit, bank guarantees, and electronic presentations of trade documents such as bills of lading.

Proven technology and established networks are vital

There is an important consideration in all this. Digitisation of trade finance requires connected and effective networks, founded on advanced technology that is tried and tested. More advanced trade portals have already proved themselves in the real world and have their own networks. Their reach extends to organisations including other financial institutions, carriers, forwarders, and major corporate customers.

These SaaS platforms can be fully and securely integrated into the back-end systems of major global banks in a quick time to market. They have already achieved a critical level of interoperability – a key sticking point for many new systems. Such platforms will, for example, take care of important updates, such as those applying to SWIFT messaging types and standards. The streamlined efficiency and increased visibility of these advanced portals has earned them a high level of credibility in more forward-looking organisations. And with multi-layered architecture and browser-agnostic functionality they offer high levels of scalability and flexibility.

In unpredictable times these platforms bring corporate customers much greater control and the flexibility to adapt to significant market changes and new financial pressures that characterise the current global economy. Increased adoption of digital trade finance solutions by banks across the globe will enable corporates to communicate far more easily with all their banks and finally move away from antiquated paper processes and multiple communication channels.

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Digitisation of global trade has gained greater urgency since the pandemic but its still a long way off. So many processes still rely on paper documents such as bills of lading used under open account, documentary collections and letters of credit transactions.

This reliance on paper increases risk and takes up huge amounts of time for staff at trade finance banks, exporters, importers, carriers, forwarders and port authorities. Paper documents go missing, are prone to forgery and generate large overheads.

The real rewards of digitising trade documents

Digitisation removes all these disadvantages, using secure and legally recognised electronic versions of trade documents that organisations exchange in encrypted form. Documents are unique, and constantly visible on a secure trade digitisation platform where they are protected from tampering by embedded digital audit trails. Their transfer at the click of a mouse eliminates costly delays when paper documents fail to arrive on time.

Last year, the G7 countries sought to advance digitisation with publication of a framework for collaboration on electronic transferable records. And it is encouraging to see the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), BIMCO, FIATA, ICC and SWIFT recently formed the Future International Trade Alliance (FITA) and signed a memorandum of understanding to standardise digitisation of international trade.

Yet agreement on, and subsequent usage of, digitisation standards is unlikely to happen soon with so many organisations involved, including the UN and WTO. There are many associations, different jurisdictions, individual government authorities and representatives of invested parties.

Global trade is likely to adopt multiple standards

The wait for standardisation is in part paralysing digitisation. It is time for banks and corporates to realise that rather then one standard, multiple standards are likely to apply in future, as they do in other fields.

It is why an increasing number of organisations – especially in South Asia and the Far East – recognise they need to deploy solutions that already deliver results. Current SaaS trade digisation platforms provide significant efficiencies they cannot ignore. These SaaS platforms digitise trade documents and have extensive networks among leading trade finance banks, carriers, importers and exporters. They come with the approval and recognition of industry bodies such as the International Group of P&I Clubs.

When banks deploy them as portals they provide end-to-end visibility of all transactions for corporate customers, vastly improving their experience. They relieve them of many time-consuming tasks and reduce overheads, offering far more choice of risk mitigation and financing options. They are also capable of exchanging data securely and rapidly with other systems, which is vital if digitisation is to extend along the whole global supply chain. This streamlining of processes eliminates the delays common with paper documents.

A key feature of a SaaS platform such as Bolero’s Galileo is that it also operates according to proven rulebooks which is an increasingly common practice in digital B2B networks, especially when written under internationally recognised jurisdictions such as the English common law. Galileo also offers a range of advanced services such as AI-based document verification, which further accelerates processes.

Move forward with trade digitsation now

Banks, carriers and corporates in all parts of the worlds must realise there is no point waiting for global agreement on trade digitisation standards. The obvious advantages of current digitisation solutions make plain that if organisations hold back, they risk losing out to those adopting platforms already in use and likely to become part of future standards anyway. It is hard to see any new international standard excluding digitisation platforms that have already achieved significant acceptance and uptake. Banks and corporates should simply get on with digitisation now.

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Today, we are probably at a similar crossroads, where digitisation is opening up new opportunities for cost-saving automation, accuracy, speed and vastly-improved efficiency in trade documentation.

We at Bolero have been at the forefront of this journey and were the first to provide the electronic bill of lading (eBL) solution approved by the International Group of P&I Clubs.

Beyond electronic Bills of Lading, Bolero has also been closely aligned with the digitisation of trade finance, expanding to provide more of the supply chain with digital alternatives to paper documents. That through our solutions support the world’s leading carriers, financial institutions and corporates. This allows us to give a unique perspective on the market changes within shipping and finance as it pertains to digitisation.

The bill of lading, for example, has been around for a long time and is likely to remain a key instrument in global trade, issued by a contracting carrier to a shipper. Yet, it too is part of the digital revolution in trade documentation. Just like its paper equivalent, the electronic bill of lading, (eBL) has 3 basic functions:

• A receipt from the carrier for the goods it describes
• The contract for the carriage of the goods
• A document of title, entitling the rightful holder to claim delivery of the goods

Just like a paper bill of lading, the electronic variant must have only one holder at any time. This can be ensured in the subscription of participating parties to a legal rulebook that outlines roles and responsibilities. This enforces the notion of a transferable singularity and secondly, through the use of a messaging platform and title registry database that ensures that essential element of singularity and that there will be no departure from what the rulebook requires.

The eBL fully replicates the functions of a paper bill of lading, containing as it does, the specific data such as a description of the cargo, the ports of loading and discharge, the date of shipment and so forth, along with the terms and conditions of carriage. The new holder takes up the rights in the eBL, subject to the obligations and limitations.

As the advantages of eBLs have become apparent, they have been recognised around the globe. BIMCO, the well-respected carrier association with a reputation for documentation, has issued a standard charter party clause. Additionally, P&I clubs in the International Group provide as standard protection and indemnity coverage for eBLs on the same basis as paper bills.

Whilst there has historically been some reticence to the adoption of these digital variants, a year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic any lasting objections to taking trade paperless appear to have dissipated entirely.

As a result of lockdowns across the globe; in-person meetings have become scarce, but some would say more importantly have prevented the processing and transportation of important trade documents, chief amongst them the Bill of Lading.

We are now at an inflection point where the digitisation agenda for carriers and forwarders has not only accelerated but there is now political capital that can be gained with the adoption of several legislation in various jurisdictions.

With more than $15 trillion in goods transported annually, the shipping industry is complex and ever-changing. Tightened security measures, business constraints, and competition require companies to look for new ways to run their businesses more efficiently. Electronic Bills of Lading (or eBLs) are changing the industry one freight bill at a time.

How do electronic bills of lading work?

The electronic bill of lading (eBL) is the electronic equivalent of a paper bill of lading. The eBL is a combination of the title registry records and an attached document containing the eBL data.

• An eBL can only have one holder at any one time
• There must be a holder at all times.
• The title registry records who is the holder.
• Holdership is the electronic equivalent of possession of the physical paper bill of lading

There are three key functions of the bill of lading:

Receipt

The receipt function is easily replicated in the electronic world. The quality of, and therefore the ability to rely on the data confirmed is linked with the quality of the security in the electronic system used. Put simply, are there sufficient measures in place to ensure the identity of the issuer (the carrier) and the authenticity of the data. The right to rely on this receipt.

Contract of Carriage

The contract function is also easily replicated in the electronic world. As we have seen, there are two elements to the bill of lading contract – the data specific to that carriage (port of loading/date of shipment etc) and data setting out the terms and conditions of carriage. As between the carrier and the shipper this is no different to the receipt function. It gets a bit more complicated when the eBL is transferred to a new holder. There is no universal law relating to how the rights and obligations in a traditional bill of lading contract are transferred, this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The Rulebook establishes the legal method by which this happens for a Bolero eBL. Transferring the eBL means that the new holder becomes a party to the eBL. The new holder takes the rights in the eBL on transfer subject to the obligations/limitations in the contract – the most well-known limitation being the carrier’s ability to limit liability for loss of or damage to the goods.

Document of Title

This function is the most difficult to reproduce in an electronic format. The answer again is found in the Rulebook that characterises precisely the nature of the rights that the new holder gets when it receives the transfer of the eBL. At the moment of transfer, the right of control over the goods passes to the new holder. The new holder becomes the only party entitled to give instructions to the carrier. This is known as constructive possession and this unique right drives the ability to use the eBL for letters of credit and documentary collections. Included in this is the sole right to demand delivery of the cargo from the carrier.

A common misconception is that moving from electronic to paper defeats the purpose of using an eBL in the first place. The speed, accuracy and integrity of an eBL will benefit users up to the point at which a replacement is sought. For example, the eventual holder may require a traditional bill of lading but that doesn’t mean those earlier holders cannot benefit from the benefits of an eBL prior to that final transfer.

Another common misunderstanding is that the replacement will only be from eBL to traditional paper bill of lading. It is relatively easy to see a situation where a party in receipt of a paper bill seeks the replacement of that paper bill with an eBL (if a letter of credit either requires an eBL (under eUCP for example) or an option for either an eBL or a traditional bill of lading). The quicker the documents are presented, the quicker the beneficiary can get paid and/or the goods can be delivered. In this instance the carrier will require the return of the paper bill of lading before issuing a replacement eBL.

So, what does the future look like? 

Being involved on both sides of international trade with carriers and financial institutions, we see the partnerships of technology providers, fintechs as the key to digital interoperability between the key counterparties of international trade and elimination of paper processes. The depth of knowledge gained through direct collaboration with the largest shipping lines and financial institutions has allowed companies like Bolero and other providers to develop the connections in networks not seen previously in the paper world.

Adding standards and guidelines on top of that with organisations like DCSA, ICC, UN CEFACT, it becomes easier to align financial documents with shipping documents via digital platforms. Standards facilitate the development of technology providers by lowering the implementation cost and increasing interoperability. But they also help streamline solutions using similar processes and patterns hence leading to adoption by the different trade parties.

At Bolero, we welcome and support any initiative that strives to enable digital trade, regardless of if this can be achieved by cooperation, interoperability, common standards or even through global Legislative developments. Having been a pioneer in this space for over two decades, we understand like no other how challenges need to be overcome and how important it is to be a trusted solution and services provider in this innovative area.

Hence, we look forward to continuing to pragmatically support our current and future customers on their digital trade journey.

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In doing so, Societe Generale has tackled one of the biggest inefficiencies still faced in trade finance – paper-based documentation. At the centre of these transactions are Letters of Credit (“LC”) – a bank undertaking to pay the beneficiary (exporter) for a trade transaction subject to presentation of required documents that comply with the terms and conditions of the LC.

When paper documents are used, they must physically move from the beneficiary to its bank, and from that bank to the issuing bank, in a cross-border transaction. The physical transfer of paper from one party to the next party is time-consuming, and all too often the cargo shipped arrives at the port of destination before the documents arrive at the issuing bank, potentially leading to demurrage penalties and a significant delay in release of the goods to the importer.

By moving from paper to electronic records, the long transit times required for couriering are replaced by the quick electronic, push-button transmission of the documents.  This speed of transfer addressed many of the challenges and risks faced by one of India’s largest exporters.

The use of electronic presentations on Bolero’s secure platform is not only more efficient in terms of speed but eliminates the risk of paper documents being lost in transit and mitigates the risk of fraud associated with modified or fake paper documents.

For this trade finance transaction, Societe Generale India used 100 per cent electronic presentation of their export Letters of Credit in support of a large shipment of petrochemicals from India to China. The electronic records included electronic Bills of Lading (“eBL”), issued and transferred using Bolero’s ePresentation solution. This radically shortened the payment settlement time due to elimination of all delays associated with paper documentation.

Antoine Castel, Chief Executive Officer, Societe Generale India described the significance of the transactions. “Societe Generale is adapting to innovative technology solutions to help clients bridge the transit time and provide them with speedier settlement in cross border trade. It is a great step forward in trade for one of our key clients, as it is making trade safer, smarter and faster,” he said.

Almost as significantly, this was also an early use of eUCP Version 2.0 (electronic supplement to the Uniform Rules and Practices for Documentary Credits). These are new rules on electronic Letters of Credit governing banks and trade finance organisations, that became effective in July 2019, published by the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris.

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Managing credit lines with multiple banks involves huge amounts of time for corporate treasuries securing and monitoring finance for trade transactions.

They spend long hours accessing different portals with varying user interfaces and functions to apply for and manage the same trade finance products. Assuming that is, that there are even portals to access. Applying for and monitoring letters of credit and bank guarantees is very difficult when logging in and out of different portals. Despite the increase in digitisation, some banks are decommissioning the tools that facilitate bank guarantee management, complicating matters further.

Consequently, large importers and exporters find managing hundreds or thousands of letters of credit (LCs), standby LCs or bank guarantees every year to be a huge challenge. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic these issues have multiplied, especially as paper trade documentation continues to drag down efficiency.

Benefit from banks’ advancing trade digitisation

As a starting point in their journey to much greater efficiency, treasuries need to drop the use of paper in transactions. The newly-published 2020 International Chamber of Commerce Global Survey On Trade Finance shows that despite increasing trade digitisation among banks, many corporates still rely on slow and cumbersome paper-based processes. Yet just 15 per cent of the banks surveyed said LCs must be in paper form in the jurisdictions in which they operate.

But attitudes are changing; the Covid-19 restrictions on physical movement demonstrated the financial supply chain’s vulnerability when paper letters of credit or guarantees are held up by the same restrictions as cargoes, even though the documents travel separately from the shipment.

A comprehensive solution for credit lines

To remove all these hurdles to efficiency, corporates need a more far-reaching digital solution that provides a single, consolidated view of their credit lines, letters of credit and guarantees for every bank they deal with.

Treasuries need to shift to an online multi-banking trade finance solution such as Bolero’s advanced Galileo platform in order to avail themselves of the security and efficiency that flows from the digitisation of letters of credit and guarantees.

Galileo is packed with user-friendly functionality and has been designed to deliver immensely greater visibility and control without any compromise on security. From a single interface, treasury departments can manage and edit letters of credit, bank guarantees and electronic presentations, as well as benefit from the full use of Bolero’s signature electronic bills of lading.

For large, multi-national corporates with subsidiaries or treasuries distributed in different global regions, Galileo also provides greater visibility across borders and organisational boundaries, providing efficiencies at scale in use of credit lines and working capital.

Increasing visibility and control

The case for linking into the growing digital banking eco-system through a single interface is becoming more convincing by the day. As the world continues to endure the disruption to normal operations caused by the pandemic, the advantages of an easily accessible, single, secure interface with multiple banks become obvious.

A cloud-based platform such as Galileo underpins business continuity, providing fast and secure access to LCs, guarantees, ensuring their continued supervision. This is highly advantageous when remote working is increasing substantially, both as a response to Covid-19 and as a business strategy. Tracking, audit trails and encryption built into Galileo also reduce the opportunities for fraud that are especially a problem when paper documents are employed.

The adoption of multi-banking trade finance solutions will allow corporates to manage and optimise their LCs, guarantees and credit line relationships with banks with an ease and efficiency that has previously been impossible and is now very necessary.

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The pandemic has certainly added to the pressures faced by treasury departments responsible for trade finance at major corporates. As well as fulfilling board-level expectations that they will drive change and provide more strategic insight, treasurers involved in global trade must now cope with an economic downturn and the constant threat of fraud.

Many treasurers know that this will be very difficult if they continue to use manual methods for complex workflows involving multiple systems. This is especially true in the management and optimisation of credit lines and important trade finance instruments such as letters of credit (LCs) or guarantees.

In December, before Covid-19 erupted, an HSBC survey found many corporate treasurers already felt ill-equipped to meet the demands placed on them. Now the pressures are even more intense.

Continued use of paper documentation for trade finance is hard to justify when the pandemic is giving a push to trade digitisation and multi-banking trade finance solutions such as Bolero’s Galileo platform offer transformative advantages in terms of efficiency, control and visibility.

Galileo will consolidate all a corporate’s credit lines, LCs and guarantees onto one interface so treasuries no longer have to manually access multiple bank portals (assuming their banks have them). It will also reduce the risk of involvement in fraud and forgery, which is such a significant problem it has led some banks to withdraw from involvement in commodity trade finance.

The oil trader Hin Leong in Singapore is, for example, alleged in court documents to have committed a major fraud using 58 import letters of credit that were not supported by any underlying transaction, along with forged bank statements, bills of lading, sales contracts and invoices.

By removing paper and vastly increasing visibility, Galileo would very substantially reduce the risk of being caught up in frauds of this kind. Paper documents are vulnerable – they can be forged when out of sight while couriered around the globe. Once a document is digitised on Galileo, however, forgery becomes extremely difficult because of encryption and audit trails. The electronic document remains completely visible at all time, but only to those engaged in the transaction, with the legitimate holder the sole party able to amend it.

Increasing the efficiency of each trade transaction through digitisation

The elimination of paper under LCs also reduces the chances of delays or failed transactions when, for example, deadlines for physical presentation to a prescribed location are not met. As treasury departments know well, LCs are notoriously complex instruments requiring close attention to detail and strict compliance with the rules governing their use. Thankfully, compliance-checking can also be automated in Galileo, which increases accuracy as well as saving time.

With Galileo, treasuries no longer log in and out of different bank portals to monitor what may be hundreds or thousands of LCs and guarantees each year. Through a single, interface that has been designed for ease-of-use and is packed with functionality, treasuries gain quick and easy access to all their banks, along with far greater control of individual LCs. This transforms how treasuries manage their relationships with their credit-providers and ensures they maintain important relationships with their preferred banks.

From the same platform, they can manage and edit all trade finance documentation and electronic presentations, as well as open account transactions and electronic bills of lading. Tracking and reporting is accomplished with a few mouse-clicks, while communications with banks remain encrypted and secure. This is a major advantage when remote working is on the increase in so many areas of the globe.

As the world changes, but the pressures intensify, there is an urgent need for treasuries to grasp digitisation for the optimisation of their trade finance operations. It makes the adoption of a multi-banking trade finance solution such as Galileo, the best move they can make.

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London, 18th Aug, 2020 –Bolero International, the leading global trade finance digitisation expert with more than two decades of experience, is experiencing substantial growth as banks, corporates and shipping liners grasp the advantages of paperless transactions during the Covid-19 disruption.

Since the successful launch of Bolero’s cutting-edge Galileo platform in February, the company has processed thousands of electronic bills of lading (eBLs).

Between January and April, 2020, the volume of eBLs presented digitally on Bolero rose by 46%, compared with the same period in 2019. Bolero’s range of integrated solutions for carriers designed alongside the world’s largest container lines has seen a 380% year-on-year increase in the volume of eBLs transacted. This very significant trend set to continue as more organisations realise digitisation has become a vital necessity in international trade. Galileo’s accelerating roll-out will meet this demand, providing advanced functionality that future-proofs digital trade services for banks, corporates, carriers and other eco-systems.

Bolero is accelerating shipments and time-to-payment, slashing the time it takes to complete a trade transaction. For eBLs, the average time from creation to available for surrender is now two days and four hours, compared with the several days, weeks or whole month required for conventional, paper bills of lading to reach their destinations. For eBLs in the letter of credit (LC) workflow, the average number of days from the point of creation to available for surrender is six days and one hour.

The lowest time to-date for an open account transaction on the Bolero platform is one minute 25 seconds, while for a full end-to-end presentation under an LC, the current record from January to April is one day, two hours and 30 minutes. All the data and statistics provided are derived strictly from live transactions and do not include any pilots or tests.

These rapid transaction times expose the significant disadvantages of paper documents, which are susceptible to forgery, are often delayed or lost in transit and cannot be couriered when movement restrictions are imposed. If bills of lading are unavailable and cargoes must remain in port, significant demurrage penalties are incurred or costly letters of indemnity are required. This in turn can generate high admin costs and lower team productivity.

Andrew Raymond, CEO, Bolero said: “The pandemic has shown that adoption of cutting-edge digitisation to remove paper and streamline trade processes is now a no-brainer. Despite very tough conditions during the pandemic, corporates, banks and carriers have achieved major efficiencies and opened up new opportunities using the advanced connectivity, open interfaces and intuitive design of our new Galileo platform.

“Having begun its roll-out we are now preparing to announce some significant new partnerships that will extend the range and scale of our services, enabling our customers to offer more to their customers. We are welcoming an even bigger trade finance community to digitisation.”

One of the most significant of these new partnerships was revealed this month (August) when Bolero announced its partnership with global trade finance technology provider TradeIX, to bring Bolero’s eBL and e-document/ePresentation solutions to the Marco Polo blockchain Network.  The partnership between Bolero and the Marco Polo Network will ultimately provide fully-integrated trade settlement processes and allow corporates and banks to increase the capacity and velocity of their trade transactions while facilitating rapid decision-making.

“The Covid-19 crisis has shown the vulnerability of paper-related processes in cross-border trade,” said Raymond. “We expect demand for digitisation to rise rapidly throughout the second half of FY2020 – a trend which Bolero is perfectly placed to meet.”

For more information, please contact:

Joanna Elliott

The Whiteoaks Consultancy

Tel: + 44 (0) 1252 727313

joannae@whiteoaks.co.uk

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London, 28th May, 2020 – Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), Portugal’s leading bank, and Mibepa, an expanding Portuguese importer of raw materials for the plastics industry, have used Bolero’s trade digitisation platform to accelerate a major shipment of polythene from India.

Bolero’s end-to-end digital presentation enabled the parties to achieve faster completion of the transaction by accelerating document flows despite all difficulties caused by the current coronavirus pandemic, including restrictions on movement of paper trade documents.

The transaction is a double-first for Bolero International, since this was the first time either Portuguese company has used the paperless Bolero trade finance digitisation platform. It also marks Bolero’s entry into the Portuguese financial eco-system as part of its continuing global growth.

As a fully end-to-end electronic presentation (ePresentation) including the Bolero eBL (electronic bill of lading), all parties to this transaction were connected to the Bolero trade digitisation platform. Mibepa was the customer and applicant, with CGD acting as the first-ever Portuguese ePresentation receiving bank. The shipment was conveyed by one of the world’s largest container logistics companies. The letter of credit for the transaction was issued under eUCP and all documents required under this letter of credit, including the bill of lading, were presented electronically using the Bolero trade digitisation platform, supported by the unique Bolero legal rulebook.

Armando Santos, Head of Corporate Banking Marketing at CGD: “The Bolero trade digitisation platform made this first transaction fast and simple, overcoming all the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. We use digital technology that helps our customers achieve significant efficiencies. We are very pleased to become Bolero subscribers and expect more of our customers to embrace Bolero and the benefits of trade document digitisation.”

Paulo Dinis, CEO at Mibepa: “Achieving fast turnaround in this transaction despite the coronavirus was a big advantage for us as an expanding business with international relationships. Bolero’s trade digitisation solution met all our expectations, enabling us to avoid any problems caused by the pandemic. I’m sure this is set to be the first of more such transactions.”

Adam Kasraoui, Bolero: “Great to see a major bank like CGD expand its digital transformation to trade and shipping documentation including the electronic Bill of Lading. We are continually committed to facilitating the adoption of our technology that allows importers and exporters to securely exchange documentation with their trade ecosystem.”

For more information, please contact:

Joanna Elliott

The Whiteoaks Consultancy

Tel: + 44 (0) 1252 727313

joannae@whiteoaks.co.uk

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London, 21st May, 2020 – Cargill Australia, a major provider of grain, oilseeds and other agricultural commodities, used the advanced functionality and speed of the new Bolero International Galileo trade finance platform to accelerate a canola oil shipment to China, meeting a tight deadline despite the current coronavirus difficulties.

Transferring two electronic bills of lading (eBLs) on Galileo, Cargill Australia completed the transaction in two days, with ePresentation sent from Australia on 27^th April, and the eBLs surrendered on 30^th April, before the start of the May Day holidays in China on 1^st May.

Loading in Australia took place between 12^th and 15^th April and ePresentation was achieved before the vessel docked at Nantong. The shipment comprised two parcels of canola oil loaded in, respectively, Newcastle and Melbourne, Australia.

“The enhanced speed and operational simplicity of Galileo gave us major advantages when we wanted to hit a tight deadline despite the disruption to normal trade processes caused by the coronavirus pandemic,” said David Werner, Trade Execution Manager, Cargill Australia. “Galileo enabled us to complete this transaction before the Chinese holiday without compromising on security or having to cut corners on efficiency.”

Launched in February this year, Bolero’s new Galileo trade finance platform is designed to future-proof digital trade services for corporates, carriers, banks and other eco-systems. With an enhanced user experience, the new platform delivers greater functionality and seamless integration with banks and other third-party systems, providing end-to-end visibility to corporate clients and banks.

Andrew Raymond, CEO of, Bolero said: “We’re thrilled that Cargill Australia has shown how our new Galileo trade finance platform makes export transactions safer, smarter and faster, no matter how demanding the circumstances. What Cargill Australia achieved would never have been possible with paper bills of lading. The speed and simplicity of digital presentation overcame all the problems generated by the pandemic, with bank branches shut, staff in short supply and social distancing measures in force.

“With Galileo we have the platform to make trade digitisation simpler and easier to deploy, providing banks, corporates and carriers with a new, highly connected, digital eco-system. Paper bills of lading should be consigned to history.”

The Galileo trade finance platform provides corporate and bank users with a new look and feel as well as expanded functionality. Its cutting-edge design provides a more intuitive, more secure, end-to-end user experience. Via a single log-in, users manage all trade services in one place with a consolidated view of all transactions for faster, more informed decisions that optimise cash-flow and working capital.

Galileo provides a single point of access so that users can create, edit and manage letters of credit, electronic presentations and guarantees, as well as open account transactions and electronic bills of lading. Bolero is also introducing value-added services in areas such as compliance and e-certificates of origin. In combination with other market leading solutions, Galileo can provide a one-stop-shop for Bolero clients.

Behind this is a flexible, modular and scalable platform, with the aim to provide interoperability through a new API infrastructure. Galileo integrates with back-office, treasury, ERP, and blockchain-based eco-systems. Available now, it will replace the current Bolero platform and will deliver significant enhancements to Bolero’s existing trade applications and network.

For more information, please contact:

Joanna Elliott

The Whiteoaks Consultancy

Tel: + 44 (0) 1252 727313

joannae@whiteoaks.co.uk

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