To stay competitive in today’s ever-changing trade environment, both corporates and banks have to modernize their trade finance operations. According to the World Trade Organization, 80 to 90 percent of world trade relies on trade finance (trade credit and bank-financed trade). Banks need to transform themselves to efficiently meeting the growing trade finance demands of corporates. Corporations are looking for ways to improve their trade service quality levels, expand trade operations to a global scale and ensure compliance to regulatory bodies without incurring additional costs. The onus lies on the banks to ensure that corporates can achieve their trade goals without any friction. Banks need to offer solutions that automate the end-to-end lifecycle processing of trade finance operations thus satiating the corporates’ trade needs with real-time visibility over their trade transactions.
The trade finance lifecycle is a very complex process when carried out manually. The processes involved are document intensive especially when corporates function their business from multiple locations and the application has to go through multiple verifications, amendments, and approvals. Digital transformation in trade finance will play a very critical role in empowering banks to provide trade finance services at lower costs and at a higher efficiency level.
