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. 

The post From 2023’s Highs to 2024’s Bright Start: Bolero Continues to Lead in eBL Issuances appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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.

The post How can banks make life easier for their corporates clients? appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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.

The post The standards debate continues – Why you need to digitise your trade processes now appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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.

The post eBLs; the decades old innovation changing today’s game. appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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.

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.

The post Part 2: The next frontier of digital trade finance – Galileo TPaaS for Banks appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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 blockchain. Coupled 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 clear; trade digitisation reduces the inherent risks of trade, reduces costs, and removes the inefficiencies of complex, paper-intensive and fragmented processes. Switching 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 functionalities, and 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 innovations. This gave us the foundations to provide a single point of access to all Bolero services, transform user experience, build 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 we unveiled 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. 

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

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

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: 

• A 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 customers, counterparties and banks. 
• Real-time visibility of all trade transactions using dashboard, reporting, 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 cost, time and the complex implementation processes required to offer a fully digitised user journey. This 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. 

The post Our journey with Galileo, the biggest leap in trade finance digitisation yet, pt.1 appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

Natural calamities such as the current COVID-19 coronavirus demonstrate how reliance on paper trade documentation continues to expose the global supply chain to disruption.

The International Chamber of Shipping estimates COVID-19 is costing the industry $350 million each week. Container spot rates are down, and idle capacity in the world fleet on the increase, while boxes stack up on Chinese quaysides. The impact of the virus has caused some carmakers to suspend operations and there are warnings of falls in Apple smartphone production.

Adverse events such as COVID-19 almost always have complex ramifications for international trade. However, digital technology has now given us the means of alleviating many of the problems – especially in relation to the paperwork that is essential to export/import transactions.

The electronic transfer of critical documents such as bills of lading, letters of credit and letters of indemnity in digital format delivers huge advantages. Think about what happens to paper documents. They have to be couriered either by people using land or air transport crossing physical borders. If there are restrictions in travel and the movement of people  (as there is in China and South Korea)  in force to prevent the spread of infection, then documents stay put and the transaction they support cannot proceed. Similarly, if office staff (at either end) are absent for prolonged periods because of a virus outbreak, all the creation, checking and dispatching of these documents are subsequently halted.

Now consider what happens if we digitise that paper flow. Automation takes care of the data uploading necessary to create digital trade finance documents. The transfer between parties is at the click of a mouse across secure digital networks, which is all a huge advantage in offices short of staff. Compliance checking, too, is automated.

End-to-end visibility on an advanced digital platform also means documents do not disappear, as paper versions frequently do in transit. Encryption and audit trails, meanwhile, reduce the many opportunities for fraud and forgery with paper documents, as they are never out of sight.

One feature of supply chain disruption is that carriers under pressure to achieve fast turn-around are sometimes tempted to release cargoes without presentation of the bill of lading, causing significant problems. The sheer speed of electronic transfer reduces the chances of this happening. Electronic bills of lading (eBLs), letters of credit, packing lists, guarantees and letters of indemnity all transfer at the speed of the internet. There is no waiting around for documents to arrive.

Research has revealed that electronic bills of lading (eBLs) require a tenth of the time it takes to process their traditional paper equivalents. Even without delays caused by acts of god and disease outbreaks, cargoes often sit in port awaiting the arrival of the paper documentation, heightening the potential for demurrage penalties. This is especially true on shorter routes.

Transferring eBLs so swiftly is critical during a time of great disruption. Bills of lading are documents of title and confer ownership of cargo. Without a bill of lading or, where necessary, a letter of indemnity, shipowners may be unwilling to release the relevant cargo. Yet the shipment that has all the correct documentation attached to it is most likely to be released first, especially when normal operations resume.

Digitisation also alleviates many of the difficulties in the financial supply chain connecting exporters, carriers and importers. When bank branches suspend operations to reduce the spread of infection, for example, letters of credit may not be issued in time to meet the payment requirements for goods.

As we move into an era of more powerful storms, increased trade friction and unpredictable virus outbreaks, corporates, banks and carriers all need to think harder about digitising their trade finance documentation if they want to avoid severe delays.

In an article on the COVID-19 difficulties, the Financial Times said the outbreak had prompted a surge in the use of remote working solutions in Asia.  Now is the time for global trade to undergo a similar digital transformation and end the dependence on paper.

The digitisation of trade finance documents cannot eradicate all the problems of epidemics or regional disputes, but it will make trade safer, smarter and faster, abolishing the reliance on out-dated methods that only increase the level of risk.

Save

The post Paper is a liability when global trade is under stress appeared first on Bolero (WiseTech Global Group).

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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On a BA flight from Delhi to Heathrow I was thinking about the week’s meetings and the extraordinary things that are happening in India. It is an amazing country that is changing quickly.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi engaged on a platform of modernisation when he was elected in 2014 with a vision of taking India from its unenviable position as the world’s largest bureaucracy into the 21st Century.

The country has subsequently benefited from some bold initiatives such as Digital India, which aims to provide wider internet access to government and other services and to broaden the understanding of all things digital among the population. Aadhaar is the world’s largest biometric identity system that has provided every citizen with a unique 12-digit ID, while TReDS is India’s Trade Receivables Electronic Discounting System. All of these initiatives are evidence of a clear government drive towards a digitised future.

In addition, the whole population seems to live on mobiles (OK I guess the younger generation in the UK are no different). The Jio mobile network, a subsidiary company of our customer Reliance Industries, now has more than 250 million subscribers from a standing start just three years ago.

Progress has come rapidly to India and the country has made a lot of money providing outsourced IT services for many years which means there is a sustainable generation of people who have grown up with digital technology. Along with government support they are now changing their own companies.

At Bolero we have been at the forefront of this trend. We have been working with Reliance, one of the country’s largest and most forward-thinking companies, to digitise India’s export business. Starting in petrochemicals, Reliance is on-boarding increasing numbers of customers, carriers and banks. The company was also a high-profile participant in the recent R3 Voltron transaction that broke new ground by executing a Letter of Credit on the Corda distributed ledger supported by a Bolero electronic Bill of Lading (eBL). This was an important first in the practical application of blockchain technology to the digitisation of trade finance and it was symptomatic of Reliance’s appetite for innovation founded on practicality that they gave it their backing. Because it was so innovative, it created a lot of interest and generated many inbound enquiries from other companies.

Being a nation that is now far more integrated into global trade than at any time since independence, India’s banks and established international institutions are also embracing digitisation with a degree of urgency. The country’s customs authorities, for example, are much more open to the electronic submission of documents and see the benefits of gaining access to shipping documents of title that have been created in a secure and accredited platform.

The ingredients and the culture of change are now in place that enable the world’s largest democracy to take advantage of the digitisation of trade.  It presents many exciting opportunities and we at Bolero are stepping up our focus on India as a market.  I am looking forward to seeing how this develops.  India, once synonymous with foot-dragging, paper-shuffling bureaucracy, has the potential to be a leader in moving the world to a more digitised future.

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London, 10^th July 2017: Bolero International, the premier trade finance digitisation solution provider has been selected by The Saudi British Bank (SABB), Saudi Arabia’s leading trade bank to bring ground-breaking advantages in speed and security with its electronic trade document solutions, slashing transaction times for corporate clients.

The adoption of Bolero solutions by SABB puts the bank at the forefront of innovation and makes it the first bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enable clients to initiate transactions electronically. The partnership will enable SABB to eradicate time-consuming inefficiencies associated with paper documents.

In accordance with the requirements of SABB’s corporate clients, the partnership will initially provide Bolero’s electronic guarantees solution, as a first step towards the provision of a wider range of digitised trade documentation solutions via the Bolero platform.

“We are extremely pleased to enter this partnership with Bolero which puts SABB at the cutting edge of trade innovation, giving our clients all the far-reaching advantages of transaction-speed and security that flow from the Bolero digital trade solutions,” said David Dew, Managing Director, SABB.

“As the pre-eminent trade bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we see this partnership with Bolero as an essential part of our commitment to excellence and innovation in the service of our highly-valued corporate clients.”

Ian Kerr, CEO of Bolero International added: “This partnership is a very exciting development for all at Bolero. We are proud to have forged this partnership with a such a progressive and highly respected institution as SABB. This is also a testament to Bolero’s dedication to revolutionising world trade through digitisation and improving corporate efficiency. Bolero has cultivated strong working relationships with many banks and we very much look forward to developing our partnership with SABB.”

— ENDS —

About SABB

SABB is a leading trade bank in the Kingdom and has been named by Global Finance magazine as the “Best Trade Finance Bank” in Saudi Arabia for 2017 i.e. 9th consecutive year. SABB has also been named by Euromoney as the “Best Trade Finance Bank” in Saudi Arabia for 2017 widely acknowledging SABB as the pre-eminent trade finance bank in the Kingdom.

About Bolero (www.bolero.net)

Bolero is a leader in the digitisation of global trade, providing cloud-based solutions that help organisations optimise working capital, secure trade finance and reduce the risks and costs of global trade.Since launching the first electronic bill of Lading, Bolero has securely exchanged trade data and documentation between trading counterparties across the entire supply-chain including buyers, sellers, financial institutions and other involved parties.

For more information, please contact:

Scott Lunn

The Whiteoaks Consultancy

Tel: + 44 (0) 1252 727313

scottl@whiteoaks.co.uk

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