Trading goods or trade finance in the international market is one of the most difficult procedures in enterprise finance. According to a report issued by Maersk, around 200 documents are exchanged among global trade entities ie. importers & exporters regularly including payments, letters of credit, foreign exchange, shipping documents ie. bills of lading, and various import/export documents, etc. For a successful transaction, all these documents are required to be approved by multiple parties including suppliers, manufacturers, customers, distributors, and various government agencies, etc. Apart from this, the process of obtaining any type of credit for a potential trading partner is also quite complex, time-consuming as well as generally conducted manually. And this is the reason behind the popularity of risk-mitigating trade finance products such as Letters of Credit.
Additionally, it is estimated by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) that over 4 million pages of documents are transmitted in documentary trade. As a result, a big portion of importers & exporters is dependent on financial intermediaries to mitigate their risk exposure. Moreover, the increasing cost of providing trade finance, combined with a high-level scrutiny process is affecting the trade finance growth possibilities of banks.
As per one of the financial experts Ngulminthang Lhanghal, to resolve these trade finance-related issues, the trade finance providers like banks or private FIs should reconsider the way they manage their manual compliance processes and current detection measures. Here technology plays a vital role. The accelerated automation processes, along with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can significantly help trade finance reducing the overall operational costs and improved customer experience.
