Blog by Tsafrir Attar, VP Digitization, Surecomp
21 October 2020
Following the launch of the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Global Survey on Trade Finance, our VP of Digitization, Tsafrir Attar, explains why the future is now for the global trade finance industry.
Over the last decade, banks have become bigger, more profitable, and better capitalized. Though with technological innovation all around us, financial institutions are still lagging behind, particularly in the area of trade finance, where in many cases transaction processing is still labour-intensive, paper-based, error-prone, and time-consuming, which significantly affects bank profitability.
So why is this the case?
Exploration of new technologies for financial institutions takes time and effort, so banks often find themselves playing catch-up, following the innovation trends rather than setting them. Plus, heavy integration investment to core products results in long and expensive onboarding, which leads to slow adoption of new technologies.
However, as we are all now acutely aware, the impact of COVID-19 on global markets has, and will, change the picture indefinitely. Awareness of the need for contactless, mobile-friendly trade finance processing has heightened.
As a result, perhaps finally the future of trade finance digitalisation really is now; perhaps now presents an unprecedented opportunity for banks to set the new global standard? While consumers are adapting like never before to a new digital norm, so too will corporate customers, expecting their banking partners to keep pace and to deliver their services without delay or error.
And how can banks leverage this opportunity? Quite simply by implementing new technologies and adjusting their services and operations to provide end-to-end digital services with higher efficiency and lower costs. The scope and possibilities for trade finance digitization are endless and contrary to some misconceptions, do not require a drastic change in operations.
Adding new automation tools without seamless interoperability to incumbent systems, however, will undoubtedly increase deployment costs and decrease ROI. It is far better to streamline operations by eliminating multiple systems that address the same problem and then focus on technologies that connect and facilitate customer engagement. While individual platforms can contribute value to a business, it is far better to use integrated, complementary solutions for greater impact, reduced implementation time, increased ROI, and faster results.
What technology should banks be considering as part of their digitalization?
We recommend a wary attitude towards relatively new tech trends such as Distributed Ledger Technology or Blockchain. While both spare the need for paper through the creation and exchange of digital assets, they still rely on a large, pre-configured user base to operate well. Blockchain has generated a lot of interest in the banking sector, but again adoption has been slow and is not widespread due to high subscription and integration costs. In order to make it worthwhile, to make it time and cost-efficient, all ecosystem parties must be onboarded to the same solution, or at least to a similar solution using the same technology, so they can communicate. However, with very few trade finance blockchain solutions out there, and without interoperability, adoption is slow and expensive.
That brings us nicely to APIs; now widely used to facilitate the consumption of web services in various industries like e-commerce, with the likes of tech giants such as Google and Salesforce acquiring API management platforms; or with fintech companies like Plaid and Stripe in consumer banking and payments respectively, APIs provide real-time, seamless digital services to end-users. Yet with data security vulnerabilities and strict compliance policies to uphold, banks again have experienced a slow acceptance of APIs.
However this is changing, and we are now finally starting to see an uptick in interest and adoption amongst financial institutions, with the more innovative, transformative banks taking the lead. Singapore-based DBS Bank believes the digitization of global trade is on the brink of explosive change and as a widely acknowledged pioneer of tech adoption, it is poised to be at the forefront of this innovation. The bank has been experimenting with various industry partners embedding itself in the customer journey by linking to ecosystem providers for features such as optical character recognition (OCR), and other platforms through APIs to ensure real-time data exchange and a reduced paper trail.
The future is now…
In short, there are many technologies out there to help financial institutions boost performance, none of them flawless but all of them generating value. The key to future-proofing customer loyalty, growth, and profitability is not just tech adoption, but the speed of tech adoption. Now, like never before, is the time for banks to leverage their relationships with technology providers; to leverage vendor expertise in adding and integrating new technologies and in aggregating data, and in helping them set a new standard in trade finance digitalisation. The future really is now.
