Multi-Bank Trade Finance Archives - Bolero (WiseTech Global Group) https://bolero.net/category/blog/multi-bank-trade-finance/ Safer, Smarter and Faster Global Trade Mon, 19 Dec 2022 05:22:36 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5 190666110 Part 2: The next frontier of digital trade finance – Galileo TPaaS for Banks https://bolero.net/blog/the-next-frontier-of-digital-trade-finance-galileo-tpaas-for-banks/ Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:00:34 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=10471 Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products For more than 2 decades, Bolero has been at the forefront of Trade digitisation. We have been working with largest corporate clients, banks, and shipping companies to digitise their trade processes and identify use cases which were not previously addressed by the market. We were the first to pioneer the […]

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Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products

For more than 2 decades, Bolero has been at the forefront of Trade digitisation. We have been working with largest corporate clients, banks, and shipping companies to digitise their trade processes and identify use cases which were not previously addressed by the market. We were the first to pioneer the commercial usage of the electronic Bill of Lading and over the years we have built up immense knowledge in the trade finance space and we are fortunate to have access to valuable data and research that allows us to build incredible products that bring real value to our customers.

Last year we introduced Galileo, our new technology platform that addresses the new challenges of digital trade in a fast-moving landscape of technological innovation, and customer expectations. With Galileo, we have built a strong foundation that allows us to continually innovate and build novel solutions for banks, carriers, and corporates.

More recently, we launched our new Galileo Multi-Bank for Corporates solution built our new technology platform. With this new solution, we have created a truly open trade ecosystem that enables the convergence of physical and financial supply chain by incorporating multi-banking capability with the electronic bill of lading (eBL) solution that we pioneered.

You can read more about our work so far here.

And this year we are making the biggest leap in trade finance.

The next frontier of digital trade finance; Introducing Galileo TPaaS for Banks

Corporates globally are looking to digitise their trade processes to save time, increase visibility of their transactions, eliminate operational and courier costs, and reduce risks associated with manual processes.

Banks on the other hand have been under significant pressure to provide new and improved digital services to their corporate customers who are pushing for a fully digital experience.

We introduce the world’s first white-labelled trade finance portal-as a-service for Banks; Galileo TPaaS for Banks.

Galileo TPaaS for Banks is the fastest and most cost-effective way for banks to digitise customer experience for their trade finance clients and comes fully branded with the bank’s colour palette and logos. Built on modern technology, it delivers an enhanced user experience, unrivalled functionality, and a broad suite of connectivity options for banks.

Galileo TPaaS for Banks offers a transformed user experience that is simple, intuitive, and designed to give corporate customers greater autonomy in the management of their trade transactions. It comes with market-leading features for trade finance products like Letters of credit, Guarantees/Standby LCs, document presentations under LC with more products in the pipeline.

Galileo TPaaS for Banks comes with:

  • Support for all operations under LCs and Guarantees such as issuance, amendment, advising, confirmation, extend or pay, claim etc.
  • Collaborative drafting of guarantees between all clients and banks.
  • Presentation of documents under LCs and open account.
  • Management of electronic Bill of Lading (eBL) lifecycle.
  • In-built cloud storage and transmission of documents.
  • Complete visibility of trade transactions and history via analytics and reports.
  • Ready connectivity with over 200 carriers for getting eBLs.

Trade portal as-a-service 

Galileo TPaaS for Banks is available on-demand as a fully managed service on our secure cloud.

This allows Banks to have an accelerated time to market, reduce the huge costs associated with building a bespoke portal but allow for great flexibility. The bank does not require any infrastructural changes and no requirements for separate deployment.

The commercial model is based on a simple recurring subscription fee.

With Galileo TPaaS for Banks, we can now offer a fully managed trade portal to the bank – as a service on the cloud – and banks can start using the service immediately and onboard their clients.

The bank not only receives the appropriate scaling for their customers but also cutting-edge technology with our future-proof Galileo platform, highly skilled resources, constant support and updates. The hassle of maintaining the solution is eliminated entirely.

Galileo TPaaS is designed for a quick start setup

 With no integrations required to start, Galileo TPaaS for Banks at its core facilitates an accelerated time to market allowing you to get up and running in a matter of days.

Banks can choose the option suitable for them to allow for a quick start. As such, there are two available methods:

  1. Direct user access: this method allows bank users to receive and/or respond to client transaction requests using the Galileo bank user interface. This method does not require an any integration. This means that banks can get up and running in no time.
  2. Direct connectivity: this is where a bank’s back-office system can directly receive client requests using APIs or any other connectivity option the bank chooses. Galileo comes pre-integrated with the major third-party back-office applications thus shortening the implementation cycle considerably.

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With flexible implementation models to choose from, banks can quickly launch digital trade services for their trade clients at lightning speeds. Banks can start with direct access and opt for integration at a later stage.

Galileo TPaaS allows for single sign-on (SSO) connectivity which means the bank’s corporate clients can access the portal from within the bank’s existing corporate channel.

With Galileo TPaaS for banks, we are empowering financial institutions to accelerate the delivery of digital trade services to their clients, whilst also reducing the total cost of ownership in comparison to an in-house build or the traditional software procurement procedures.

We worked with leading corporate clients and financial institutions and designed Galileo TPaaS to help banks to deliver digital trade services to their clients without the need of taking on a complex implementation project or make heavy technology investments towards digitization.

We are continuously adding more features on Galileo and collaborating with other innovative fintech specialists with expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT based solutions to enhance and deepen the functionalities we offer within Galileo TPaaS for Banks.  This will result in a significantly improved customer experience and Increased customer satisfaction through innovative value-added services.

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Our journey with Galileo, the biggest leap in trade finance digitisation yet, pt.1 https://bolero.net/blog/our-journey-with-galileo-biggest-leap-trade-finance-digitisation/ Tue, 26 Jan 2021 09:02:33 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=9576 Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products Over the course of the last 20 years, international trade has expanded massively with goods and services traded globally now accounting for over 60% of the global gross domestic product.  Although trade has changed significantly in the last 20 years, processes have largely remained manual, paper-intensive and complex. Digitising trade processes is not a new initiative, but the previous lack of open standards, regulations and heterogeneous systems has resulted […]

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Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products

Over the course of the last 20 years, international trade has expanded massively with goods and services traded globally now accounting for over 60% of the global gross domestic product. 

Although trade has changed significantly in the last 20 years, processes have largely remained manual, paper-intensive and complex. Digitising trade processes is not a new initiative, but the previous lack of open standards, regulations and heterogeneous systems has resulted in the creation of digital silos stifling further progress. 

Things however have started to change and trade digitisation has started to pick up momentum due to the evolution of recent technologies like AI, machine learning, open APIs and blockchainCoupled with the recent challenges brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen the trade finance community adopt digitisation more readily.  

The benefits of digitising trade processes are cleartrade digitisation reduces the inherent risks of tradereduces costs, and removes the inefficiencies of complex, paper-intensive and fragmented processesSwitching focus towards trade finance digitisation delivers countless opportunities and benefits for all trade parties. 

We at Bolero have been at the forefront of trade digitisation and innovation for more than two decades. We were the first to roll out a commercial electronic bill of lading solution that allows our clients to receive digital bills of lading from our network of more than 200 shipping carriers across the globe and pass those along to their trade counterparts.  

Bolero’s transformation journey 

With more than 20 years’ experience in trade, maritime and cloud technology, we have access to data and research that allows us to build products that bring incredible value to our customers. And as such we have cemented ourselves as a main stay in the trade finance digitisation community. 

As part of our objectives to build innovative, modern, and intuitive solutions we turned to our customers, partners, and friends in the industry for feedback to fuel our innovation. In these conversations, we were able to spot unmet needs and identified use cases that were not previously addressed by the market. We gained valuable insights from these discussions which have helped us identify improvements, add new functionalitiesand create new solutions to address challenges faced by the trade community.  

The first step for our talented team of engineers was to future proof our tech stack to keep up with the latest technology trends and innovationsThis gave us the foundations to provide a single point of access to all Bolero services, transform user experiencebuild robust bank-grade security systems, and improve connectivity with third-party systems allowing us to provide deeper and wider functionalities to our customers.  

This became a reality when wunveiled our new platform Galileo in February 2020 Our first live module – the Open Account module is enabling exporters and importers to exchange trade documents including electronic bills of lading (eBLs) with each other in a very collaborative and simple way 

A little more about Galileo  

Galileo is a flexible, modular, and scalable platform that has been designed to deliver future-proofed digital trade services to Banks, Corporates, Carriers and other trade eco-systems. With an enhanced user experience powered by advanced technology, it delivers unrivalled functionality and seamless integration. 

 Galileo is also capable of growing in functionality with its ability to embed best-in-class solutions from our partners as value-added services. Our partnership with Traydstream for document precheck and Mitigram for price discovery makes it even more interesting and comprehensive for end users. 

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Figure 1. Our Galileo platform, connectivity and integrations are key.

Galileo Multi-Bank for Corporates; the first solution developed on our new platform. 

 

bolero-galileo-multi-bank-for-corporatesGalileo Multi-Bank for Corporates is a powerful, collaborative and secure portal allowing corporates to manage and track all their trade transactions with multiple banks and counterparties on one platform.

This is a major transformation to our existing multi-bank solution used by clients globally.

 

Galileo Multi-Bank for Corporates allows customers to send their letters of credit or guarantee transactions to banks using our web application or any third-party portal application. Client transactions are sent to banks on a secured messaging channel and Banks can receive transactions via Bolero’s web application or directly into their back-office systems. 

 Galileo Multi-Bank for Corporates solution offers: 
  • transformed digital user experience that is simple and intuitive. 
  • Access to all trade transactions like Letters of Credit, Guarantees, presentations in one place 
  • API based connectivity with banks and third-party applications 
  • Ready connectivity and access to more than 200 carriers across the globe. Collaborative drafting of trade instruments between customerscounterparties and banks. 
  • Real-time visibility of all trade transactions using dashboardreporting, audit and traceability tools 
  • Email and in-app notifications 

Replacement of user certificates with 2-factor authentication using Google authenticator or Microsoft authenticator or Bolero’s own authenticator will allow for quick onboarding of clients on Galileo.  Over the next 12 months, we hope to move all our existing customers to our Galileo Multi-Bank for Corporates solution.  

The collaborative process between our teams and customers allowed us to use that feedback to develop an innovative platform that addresses the difficulties the trade community faces. We are extremely pleased with our progress and the positive responses received from customers, partners, and prospects. The responses have driven us, even more, to make sure we continue to develop cutting-edge and innovative solutions. 

The biggest leap is yet to come 

With our new technology platform, we have built a strong foundation that allows us to continually innovate and build novel solutions for banks, carriers and corporates.  

We have solved important issues corporates have been facing with the release of our Galileo Multi-Bank for corporates solution by providing a transformed user experience and better connectivity with banks and at the same time eliminating the time spent on manual processes 

On the other hand, banks have not been able to offer a fully digitised service to their trade customers due to the immense costtime and the complex implementation processes required to offer a fully digitised user journeyThis is a gap in the market that we believe we can fulfil.  

For some time now, this has been an area of intense interest for us at Bolero. We have been working tirelessly in close collaboration with one of the biggest financial institutions in the world to address these issues so that we can bridge this gap and enable banks to offer a fully digital trade finance experience to their clients. 

We are close to sharing our newest innovation and the biggest leap in the trade finance space and we cannot wait to tell you more about this in the coming days. 

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Corporates are shifting to multi-bank platforms – and taking all the credit https://bolero.net/blog/blockchain-technologies/corporates-are-shifting-to-multi-bank-platforms-and-taking-all-the-credit/ Sun, 22 Nov 2020 11:03:29 +0000 http://pistachiotesting.com/bolero/2017/07/21/corporates-are-shifting-to-multi-bank-platforms-and-taking-all-the-credit/ Large corporate organisations engaged in international trade face many difficulties when managing credit lines and guarantees provided by multiple banks. Costs and fees can soon mount up as central visibility and control over thousands of instruments are lost in a maze of processes and proprietary systems. A corporate with international involvement may have many credit […]

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Large corporate organisations engaged in international trade face many difficulties when managing credit lines and guarantees provided by multiple banks.

Costs and fees can soon mount up as central visibility and control over thousands of instruments are lost in a maze of processes and proprietary systems. A corporate with international involvement may have many credit lines and thousands of guarantees open at any one time.

Keeping them updated and managing them to avoid unnecessary bank fees, costs and duplication becomes extremely difficult in the absence of a consolidated overview provided by a single platform interfacing with all required banks.

There are however many valid reasons for having multiple bank relationships.

Firstly, banks have different areas of expertise, whether in products, trading zones or particular countries and home jurisdictions, which corporates need to make use of. Secondly, having commercial relationships with several banks gives a corporate the opportunity to negotiate the optimum terms and conditions for a transaction.  Thirdly, the involvement of several banks spreads the risk and reduces premiums when financing high-value transactions.

These are the advantages – but the distinct disadvantages of dealing with banks through traditional methods are now very apparent.

For a start, each bank will have its own distinct IT system, requiring corporate customers to go through the tedious, time-consuming and potentially confusing process of logging into a different portal and going through security checks and passwords in each case.

More significantly, when there are thousands of documentary credits and guarantees, it becomes incredibly difficult for a corporate to keep on top of every instrument – to be able to see them and ensure they are updated and employed in the most cost-effective manner possible.

A large organisation, for example, may have local offices or subsidiaries that obtain their own bank guarantees, which makes it very difficult for treasuries to see and manage centrally.

It is still the case that in many corporates, spreadsheets are employed for this function to operate effectively. Yet even where organisations have their own treasury management systems, reconciliation and establishing degrees of exposure can be very problematic when there may be so many instruments behind deals worth billions of pounds. Interfacing with bank systems is fraught with difficulty and can be very manual and time-consuming.

However, corporates are increasingly consolidating their handling of all these processes and instruments on a single third-party platform, handing themselves huge gains in man-hours, visibility and importantly – substantial savings in bank fees and costs.

Vastly increased visibility of credit lines, documentary credits and guarantees on a web-based platform gives a consistent view regardless of location. The result is the more efficient use of credit lines and big savings, to a degree that can never be achieved by any other means.

It gives a treasury the chance to call down credit much earlier, potentially benefiting the organisation by 10 or 20 basis-points – a significant saving on large numbers. The clear level of visibility provided by a multi-bank platform also means existing credit lines can be utilised without all the fees and processes required to set up new ones.

Full or even partial integration with back-office systems, seamless communication with panel banks and an effective system of alerts, all make the single multi-bank platform the future for hard-pressed treasuries toiling to improve cash-flow management and the efficient deployment of working capital.

As the global banking network expands, the treasury of any successful corporate involved in major trade transactions will have to shift to a single, multi-bank platform built and supplied by a third-party provider with an established reputation for total reliability, security and efficiency in international trade finance and banking.

The advantages in a globalised world of round-the-clock operations are simply going to be too obvious to ignore.

 

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Treasuries need a consolidated interface with all their banks to maximise trade capabilities https://bolero.net/blog/corporate-treasury-needs-consolidated-bank-interface/ Mon, 05 Oct 2020 08:36:00 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=7801 Andrew Raymond, CEO 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 […]

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Andrew Raymond, CEO

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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Galileo is the best ally for corporate treasuries under pressure from all sides https://bolero.net/blog/galileo-corporate-treasury/ Mon, 05 Oct 2020 08:29:19 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=7761 Andrew Raymond, CEO 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 […]

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Andrew Raymond, CEO

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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Bolero’s new Galileo platform is the future of trade digitisation https://bolero.net/blog/boleros-new-galileo-platform-is-the-future-of-trade-digitisation/ Tue, 18 Feb 2020 14:47:22 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=5635 Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products Global trade is on the cusp of a major digital transformation. Exporters, importers, banks and carriers are continuously trying to streamline paper-intensive operational processes, seeking safer, smarter and faster digital solutions. While the industry is buzzing with options such as distributed ledger technology, AI/NLP, RPA etc., in reality most organisations […]

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Anchal Tiwari, Head of Products

Global trade is on the cusp of a major digital transformation. Exporters, importers, banks and carriers are continuously trying to streamline paper-intensive operational processes, seeking safer, smarter and faster digital solutions.

While the industry is buzzing with options such as distributed ledger technology, AI/NLP, RPA etc., in reality most organisations still find digitisation a bridge that is difficult to cross. The industry in itself has come a long way with governments and trade bodies taking steps to create and foster trade ecosystems. Yet the lack of ubiquity and interoperability in these disparate initiatives still remains a challenge for businesses.

We at Bolero, are pleased to announce the launch of Galileo, our brand new platform for digital trade that seeks to solve some of these key challenges. Galileo has been designed to keep the customer experience central, enabling seamless interactive digital conversations. It is truly open and ecosystem-ready; the only digital platform that enables the convergence of physical and financial supply chain by incorporating multi-banking capability with eBL flows.

In the new platform, corporate clients will be able to access all Bolero services through a single user interface, get end-to-end visibility of their transactions and connect with their counterparties and multiple banks.

Banks will have a consolidated view of transactions across different clients and will be able to connect the new platform with their back-office systems through APIs.

With Galileo’s modern and open architecture, Bolero will provide value-added services to clients through pre-integrated partner solutions. Document pre-check is one such service that we are adding in partnership with Traydstream. As trade technology evolves, clients can expect new services to be added much in the same way as an app store.

Galileo has been designed in collaboration with our customers spanning corporates , carriers and banks and brings together the collective mindshare from over two decades of trade experience and industry-wide expertise. It redefines the user experience and promises to deliver much more  functionality.

With the new Galileo platform, we have future-proofed digitisation to make it more accessible, more connected and fully capable of integration with critical third-party applications. Galileo will provide access to the best of the world’s evolving trade eco-systems, where interoperability opens the door to new solutions and new services.

Personally, working on Galileo has been a very fulfilling experience. You can read the exclusive interview that Global Trade Review did with Andrew Raymond and myself. Inviting more conversations around Galileo at anchal.tiwari@bolero.net

 

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Global Liner Shipping and the forces driving trade finance digitisation in Asia https://bolero.net/blog/global-liner-shipping-and-the-forces-driving-trade-finance-digitisation-in-asia/ Wed, 09 Oct 2019 12:02:36 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=5589 Philippe Salles, Senior Consultant The Global Liner Shipping Asia conference in Singapore confirmed how many companies in the region are shifting to a digital mindset, especially when it comes to trade finance documentation. During the well-attended event, I answered many questions raised by carriers and exporters, especially through my participation in panel discussions. I gave […]

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Philippe Salles, Senior Consultant

The Global Liner Shipping Asia conference in Singapore confirmed how many companies in the region are shifting to a digital mindset, especially when it comes to trade finance documentation.

During the well-attended event, I answered many questions raised by carriers and exporters, especially through my participation in panel discussions. I gave a presentation about ongoing pilots in the deployment of electronic bills of lading (eBLs) using blockchain technology and subsequently took part in a discussion on vertical integration and consolidation in the carrier and forwarding business.

These sessions gave me the opportunity to highlight the fact that Bolero’s platform not only cuts out paper-based delays but has an established network of major banks and corporates who are already using it. Bolero brings the two worlds of trade and banking closer together when historically they have been very distinct, creating major efficiencies and opening up new opportunities for carriers and forwarders to develop distinctive new services.

Right across the event, it was apparent just how the enthusiasm for digitisation of trade documentation is growing among corporates. This is a region where many short-sea transits suffer from unnecessary delays and costs when cargoes are not released on time because the paper documentation has yet to catch up or has not been updated or approved.

Two separate conversations with global manufacturers at the event illustrate the point. One is in fast-moving consumer goods and other in industrial vehicles, but both have plants and distribution hubs across Asia that send goods and materials to one another on a just-in-time basis. Yet because they cross customs borders and use a variety of different ports they face all the usual problems of paper processes in terms of delays and authentication, even though the shipment times are relatively short.

However, because most countries in the region are not burdened with a heavy overlay of traditional, paper-based systems they are in a good position to advance further and faster into digitisation. It is no accident, then, that electronic presentation of trade finance documentation is gaining acceptance.  Exporters and carriers increasingly understand the efficiencies and opportunities that flow from the digitisation of important trade documents, such as bills of lading.

Elsewhere at the conference, speeches on standardisation and interoperability of systems were well-received. The increasing burden of regulation was also a strong theme, especially in sessions examining the consequences of the IMO system which came into force last year to control carbon emissions at sea. This in turn led to considerations of where the oil price will go and how it will influence compliance with the new regulatory regime.

There is still much work to do in raising awareness of the full benefits of trade document digitisation, but GLS Asia proved we are making considerable headway.

 

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New products and partnerships – I will lead Bolero to a wider audience https://bolero.net/blog/new-products-and-partnerships-i-will-lead-bolero-to-a-wider-audience/ Tue, 28 May 2019 06:57:21 +0000 https://www.bolero.net/?p=5514 Andrew Raymond, CEO As the new CEO of Bolero, I am excited about the opportunities presented to Bolero and I look forward to working with our team to address the challenges the company faces to make the most of the market potential. Bolero finds itself at the centre of the major trends in both the […]

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Andrew Raymond, CEO

As the new CEO of Bolero, I am excited about the opportunities presented to Bolero and I look forward to working with our team to address the challenges the company faces to make the most of the market potential.

Bolero finds itself at the centre of the major trends in both the trade finance and shipping arenas.  We can see that all around the globe, carriers, corporates and banks have grasped the necessity for being digital.  Their clients demand digitisation of documents and workflows and the competition for clients revolves around providing a digital end-to-end experience.  With a universally-recognised messaging solution and a proven track record in trade document digitisation and maritime law, we are well-placed to help all the participants.

I look forward to bringing forward new applications which leverage our know-how, technology base, reputation and legal constructs (the rule book).  Distributed ledger is taking off and our partnerships with innovators such as R3 are paying dividends.  We have a unique capability to interoperate between platforms and blockchains and this is becoming an important issue with the proliferation of these initiatives.

With these advantages and using my previous experience of taking innovative products to market I am leading the initiatives to deliver new applications and more value to our customers. This is a point that I am really passionate about. Technology companies must address customer needs and not just a technology challenge. This is why we are adopting a two-pronged strategy that addresses market needs more closely than ever. Firstly, we will be building new applications. Those applications will be directly relevant to our user-base, transforming efficiency and making their lives easier.

Secondly, we will develop new partnerships.  Our partnerships with vendors and integrators, and especially with carriers and forwarders, will mean more trading portals have “Bolero inside”. Partnerships build on our unique ability to deliver transformational interoperability between current platforms and emerging blockchain technologies.

The result will be that if you are a shipper, carrier or forwarder, you are more likely to be using Bolero technology in future, even if it doesn’t have our name on it. You’ll know because of the outstanding functionality and features of the applications and the security and efficiency of the messaging. A new Bolero will emerge, leveraging our many strengths and the talents of our great team.

It’s why I say great times are ahead for Bolero, and I’m thrilled to be at the helm as we speed ahead at the forefront of trade digitisation.

 

 

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