Sign Colorado Banking Bill Of Lading Secure

Industry sign banking colorado bill of lading online

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to another episode of the icc academy covid19 briefing an interactive video series where we explore the economic and health implications of this coronavirus pandemic and what must be done to ensure successful recovery for businesses big and small i'm your host thomas paris and in this episode we will discuss how to help banks achieve digitization a critical goal for the industry joining us today is dave mehmel gaddy roshan jacob de young alexander golandres and our moderator today will be stephen beck as you know these briefings as you know these briefings showcase our collaboration between the icc and many global partners from the private and public sector during this session we'll start by running through a few topics followed by an audience q a session at the end so we invite you to hold your questions in the chat to ask your send your questions in the chat but hold them until the end and we'll go through them together so let's kick things off stephen over to you thanks thomas good afternoon good morning ladies and gentlemen i'm steve beck head of trade finance uh trade and supply chain finance at asian development bank coming to you live from very locked down manila if there was ever any doubt about the importance of digitizing trade and supply chains before the crisis uh we can all agree there is no doubt at all now if you would have told me before the lockdown that adb's trade finance program would do 940 transactions valued at 554 million dollars between 1 april and 15 may all remotely without a hitch i would have been very skeptical and yet to my pleasant uh surprise that's exactly what's happened thanks to a great team uh and some modest degree of digitization uh we've been able to implement into our business and and i believe that you the trade finance industry has had the same pleasant surprise the industry has been amazingly resilient um and i think before lockdown very few of us would have would have predicted just how resilient had the crisis have occurred a few years ago the financial sector would not have been able to support the flow of trade that we are able to to support today in lockdown knowing how vital that digitization is just securing global trade and supply chains for food medicine and so much more we have an obligation to move the digitization of our businesses forward aggressively and and that's what this webinar is all about um i'd like to to thank uh our great panel of speakers for agreeing uh to uh to talk with us today we're gonna start with uh david maynell who played a leading role in drafting the international chamber of commerce's guidance that came out a couple of weeks ago um on how banks can manage sort of workarounds to address issues really arising from a lack of digitization um issues around the delivery of documents under letters of credit where you know we've had courier services not functioning the way they usually do and so on so david is the founder of trade lc advisory and prior to that um he was a global head of trade product management for financial institutions at deutsche bank uh where he had a 30-year career after david speaks for 10 minutes um you'll be followed by three senior guys um from uh leading companies that digitize trade and supply chain operations for banks and their clients and they'll each speak for 10 minutes and we'll end off with a rapid fire q a for five sorry for 15 minutes over to you dave thank you very much stephen and uh good morning good afternoon to everybody as steven mentioned in late april the itc uh released a collection of what we would call rapid response measures that had been implemented by many trade finance banks around the world in order to keep trade finance moving despite the pandemic and i think it was quite a poignant point in the paper that the problem being faced today is rooted in trade's single most persistent vulnerability no surprise it's paper it's really the achilles heel of trade finance and the fact is this disruption was always going to happen the only question was how and when as one of the drafters of the paper accurately pointed out the issue that needed to be addressed was that that electronic documents are a kind of um uncomfortable intersection at the moment in between 19th century legislation and unsophisticated 21st century processes and operations as we all know trade and trade finance operations require very significant back office operations to process the paper so it's felt appropriate by the icc's digitalization working group to collate data on the measures that were being applied and this wasn't just done by the icc we're also joined by it for and by bath and this led to the paper that you saw at the end of april now these practices that are recorded are unique in that they target the singular problem of how to keep trade flowing when paper-based transactions are difficult or even impossible due to reduced physical interactions and it should also be born in mind that whilst it's only two three weeks since the paper was it was published this is a very rapidly changing environment and these practices are continually being improved so the paper doesn't actually set out best practices but it's a practical reference document comprising trusted information about the measures that were put in place events have made it quite obvious that not just fish but corporates logistics etc will need to re-engineer business processes following the pandemic and strongly believe that governments will be an enabler for this in fact absolutely essential to involve the governments to help combat the practicalities of trade finance during the com during the pandemic many banks indicated they were taking their own measures to relax internal rules on the original documentation however this is a pity only 29 of the respondents reported that their local regulators had actually provided supports and this regulatory support is essential the pandemic itself i guess has highlighted challenges to five parts of the trade finance process deal origination and distribution negotiable instruments document transmission all fly signatures and shipping and the specific difficulties that fi is faced in these five areas are detailed in a paper which if you haven't done so already i strongly recommend you go to the icc website and download the paper now these difficulties primarily reflects free common hurdles lack of staff inability to print and delays in or inability to deliver documents all paper based and the ad ad hoc practices that the banks have put in place fall under four categories expanded existing digital training channels electronic documents electronic signatures and new business processes and controls and the papers detailed many of these specific practices let me just give you a few that have been stated that now a greater usage of email fis are now using more third-party platforms they are incorporating the use of electronic signature solutions into existing processes we've seen much more pdf presentation of documents and we've seen a waiver of the need for wet ink customer signatures banks are using software with a capability of creating electronic signatures and there are amending agreements to allow for all parties to agree to use electronic documents we're also seeing authentication of documentary presentation examinations for the use of scanned documents and one very important one and it's still too slow some banks are now adopting eucp version 2.0 and eurc version 1.0 as operating models and they're configuring their internal processes for greater use of these rules and you should strongly consider this option moving forward this is why these electric rules are there why they were introduced last year but in essence this highlights three trends the first decision evolution in the practice is related to electronic signatures for instance the signature by attached email was widely used the second is in the practices related to electronic documents and this is moving forward most quickly and easily in the geographies where local authorities have issued official guidance and the third is the rollout of digital solutions but this how all of these have perhaps introduced some new risks into the existing trade processes this one under four categories uh no surprise due diligence operational unfolding security at the first three the fourth is formats and you understand this if you look at the icce rules all stakeholders need to be ready to accept electronic formats and that format needs to be readable by all parties i mean one of the key issues i've already alluded to this is that regulatory guidance and advice is critical to the facilitation of digital practices in certain geographies and some haven't met this better novel i'm not going to name which countries have but some have certainly been better and a few of those are in asia the challenge with electronic documents such as electronic bills of lading is whether or not they are legally valid and this answer requires advice from local authorities and governments but as of april 2020 as of may 2020 there has still been limited regulatory guidance issued one question that many people ask is why weren't these digital measures in place already fair question there are three answers cost complexity and networks it's not for me to go into this now but all of you i know are aware of these issues anyway so in conclusion there are lots of lessons i think that we've learned from the first one is it now three months of this pandemic it is possible to go digital in a crisis use ad hoc measures great news official guidance and mitigants are critical in the early stages now we know what needs to be done cross industry working groups are needed to make the regulatory changes happen and the regulatory and government guidance is required in order to update and align laws legal frameworks which brings me on to another key issue which i know many of us in the digitalization working group are fully aware of and keep pushing which is adoption of the insta trial model law on electronic transferable records if governments could do this it would definitely act as a catalyst blending together multiple existing single party platforms works in the short term but connecting multiple counterparties through standardized platforms is a more sustainable way forward and let's not forget that the simplest way to resolve most issues is not even digital it's a matter of promoting dialogue between the commercial parties as well as between the banks now as a final observation before we pass over to the next speaker the icc has a number of tools to help one in particular is called the icc digital trade road map which is available on the icc website and i do urge you to download it it will help you work for advocacy reasons with regulators governments and your own employers so that would be my first my final message please look at that document it will help you immensely stephen many thanks thanks very much dave um so now we're going to be uh hearing from um the executives from uh the companies that help banks and companies digitize and dave to your point uh what's on a lot of people's minds and why they haven't advanced the digitization in their own businesses really does have a lot to do with as you say cost complexity of implementation uh and uh and compatibility with existing systems and so on there it's a it seems like a daunting undertaking so it'll be interesting to hear from uh our next speakers how how that kind of stuff can be managed gaddy i'll i'll call on you if uh your kids or your wife or someone isn't uh yeah no no we have a completely different way of looking down actually it was i'm in the office and it was one of the employees they are not used to me running a webinars but don't worry we can fire them all so it's perfectly fine um so first of all thank you very much for arranging this uh a very interesting event and and i hope that i'll be able to to share at least from our perspective which means that of course we will not go into the traditional sales pitch i'm sure that every bank will eventually get it directly and not through webinars my i would say main a point that i would like to discuss during today's event is actually to share some more views from the outside of the banking industry um which the major i would say the major heavy lifting of digitizing trade was usually led by the banks because buyers sellers the market and shipping industry they are just less affected from the use of paper carriers will just issue it on one side and receive it on the other side and they don't really care what is happening in between the buyers and the sellers they just love complaining about the use of paper but are not very active in moving forward however um the copy 19 with all its challenges uh brought also many opportunities so the great phrase of don't waste a good crisis uh is uh repeat the day constantly uh i guess through all webinars as well uh but what i wanted actually to show is that today actually the or at least from our point of view the heavy lifting of on boarding the network which by the way for for bank for banking because of regulatory barriers such as promoting third party services is a real challenge the carriers on the other hand they don't have this problem they don't have this issue or constraints so i'll be happy if thomas you can share the video to show a bit of the activity which is actually led by the carriers and then i will thank you okay as coronavirus rampages through the world and every physical encounter presents an imminent risk it's time to go digital zim takes another step towards giving customers a digital experience paperless trade is a new value-added service that enables you to issue transfer and validate your electronic bills of lading as part of our continuous pursuit of innovation we have collaborated with wade a digital courier platform provider that specializes in shipping industry processes zim customers can now enjoy the benefits of paperless trade stay safe and reduce unnecessary physical encounters save up to fifty dollars per bill of lading and cut down on lengthy document verification processes controlling and delivery costs transfer documents in minutes instead of days or weeks issuing and transferring documents can be as simple as sending an email now there's no need to change the trade process manage your documents using one user-friendly digital platform forward your electronic bills of lighting to relevant parties and attach soft copies of other trade documents to your virtual envelope prevent fraud and risk of document loss or misplacement maintain a sustainable process use less paper and minimize your carbon footprints shippers and consignees are relieved from registration subscription or transaction fees the zen wave paperless trade collaboration it's time to go digital [Music] thank you very much so the reason why i wanted to to share this video is because until three months ago myself our sales team jacob alex used to wander around the world and try to convince people that digitization i mean it was very easy to explain why paper is inefficient but why should you do the change now it's a network a tool and it requires of course a many particip just like any other network the value grows uh by having a larger network so today and i know that it's not only our activity which means of course i'm seeing it also i know that also other service providers are promoting similar activities so today instead of us going with our very limited sales force and on boarding your customers which are the corporates and of course there's there are other service providers which are the logistic companies so it's now herds of sales teams between zim and msc and other carriers which are also going on boarding the entire customer base market by market uh not because of course everyone wants to promote digitization in greener world but currently they are also suffering and and of course the best way to get a carrier or or to get anyone to join and to start offering a digital service is by showing him that his business is suffering and promoting business continuity uh so the majority of our activity these days is first of all it's it's very successful we are seeing unbe ievable amounts of newcome of new a corporates which are joining the service if again three months ago i would go to a bank and say that we have one or two customers which are on the network and would like to start a presenting document today we can come with dozens uh almost per day which means that we are of course collecting and onboarding and coming with a very interesting a offering to the bank to the different banks um so it's it's a completely different environment than it used to be before the current situation i'm sure that the other speakers will confirm it as well uh the banks currently can be much more optimistic which you can be much more optimistic which means that instead of just going and trying to convince everyone and and removing a paper in order to make the traditional tools like letters of credit or collections or anything that still requires the bank to take possession of all their goods it was a very complicated mission uh because no one else suffered just no one else suffered in the same levels at the bank maybe only the quantity traders which are using a lot of trading and they're using a lot of paper these days everyone is suffering so digitization is spread much much faster of course we invite all the participants here in the webinar to to explore the services uh the technology already here uh joining and testing is not complicated anymore it does in some cases you don't even need you don't even need the id to be involved at all which means that you can do it completely a you can have an immediate onboarding and i would say that we are actually i'm the youngest company here in the in the room uh we are only existing since 2015. of course we we completed the some trials in in 2016 but today uh if just to share some uh out from our internal discussions uh the industry have completely changed and this is the let's say the money time of digitization again everyone is suffering lots of challenges but there are also lots of opportunities now of course from a banking perspective or from to be honest anyone else once you go digital you never go back which means that the minute you receive your first electronic bill of lading uh and and you enjoy the experience and everyone here in the room is is ensuring that the experience is as positive as it can get usually it will it would be really hard to go back to sending paper documents by korea which means that also trade finance tools can be improved and we are actually seeing it it's not interest anymore it's an actual promotion of digitization which is actively happening by all the different involved parties uh same as a also regulators and everyone else so i think that i have two more minutes i paid for 10 but i'll be happy to share my spare minutes uh with the respectful other attendees so thank you very much many thank you thanks a lot jocko would you uh please introduce yourself from uh bolero and uh give us uh ten minutes please okay 10 minutes that's going to be a challenge for me uh but i'll try steve um and thanks cardi maybe for the two extra minutes so um what i've done for you is i've prepared a little presentation it's only a few slides uh with uh i'll pick up on some of the bullets just so you know for the people who don't know me i actually um i'm heading up to salesforce within bolero but i have a strong banking background in operations account management sales training anything under the sun so i'll come in from a bit of a pragmatic angle also when i do my presentation here so um just going to the next slide just one minute on bolero and i can't see the full slide but so basically we've been around for over two decades so and actually the name bolero stands for bill of lading electronic registry organization not many people know that we start off initiative within swift um and since then we have been as we always call it bridging the financial and physical supply domains so we cover um the bank to cooperate to bank communication on for instance let's credit instruments but also we enable the actual utilization by means of uh you know e-presentations and use electronic documents our clients use anything you know from open account transactions but we're also connected to blockchain initiatives and we are currently rolling out our new technology stack which is called galileo and basically if you've been around for 20 years you know you have to take one point where you say okay to ensure we're future proof and to incorporate all the feedback we've got from the clients you know corporates banks anybody over the last two decades into a new technology stack so we make sure that the user experience is you know at par at least with competition if not you know we have gone a bit further as well so let's talk about you know the topic of my my my small section here um so enabling e-presentations under letters of credits just a bit of background information you know we've been around for two decades but i just checked the files internally and we actually supported the first e presentation on the eucp over the bolero network back in december 2010 so that's uh you know 10 years ago um so it has been done it has been around it is a common practice as you see in the second bullet you know in in quite a few areas around the globe unfortunately now it had to take a tragedy like covet 19 to suddenly create interest with many more parties around the globe and i mean not just uh the banks but also especially the corporates um to see okay we have to move away from paper and this is probably the the accelerator needed for the business to move um what we also will notice and i'm pretty confident of that because you've seen that also in previous crisis is that you know in times of global turmoil risk will go up so people will tend to start falling back on things that they know which are of course you know the letters of credit so i expect personally you know based on my background to see an increase in levels of credit probably you know the average uh value will go down a bit um but you will see a lot more over the next coming months and of course to to to the end and to the other speakers as well um what you will see is that e presentations will go up and we already see that happening right now especially in the open account space we already see it actually and we also see the first signs that it's now also picking up under the bank transactions and i'm sure that is a trend that will continue and to guide this point you know once you go digital you will not go back i also would like to stress also today's point in the beginning you know that banks have resorted um and and thankfully guided by icc to bcp process to business continuation processes or procedures with workarounds to handle copy documents via email or via violet you know the swift way of submitting documents between banks at least and also between corporates but that is not the same as having an ae presentation these are workarounds temporary workarounds but you know to have real e presentations you would need to go the eucp and the eurc route for the collections and you would have to have you know real electronic documents instead of just having copies flying around um so it's it's fine for now it it serves a purpose but i think it also urges the fact that you know one needs to look beyond the initial impact of the crisis and prepare you know for the aftermath and maybe even the second wave coming in so another thing and i've been i've been fighting this battle with banks and corporates and carriers for i would say the last decade adoption of e-presentations and electronic documents still requires a paradigm shift for many um many i mean banks especially banks and you have to rethink how things have been done in the past um as i said in the beginning we we combined the financial supply chain and the physical supply chain what i noticed with a lot of bankers and a lot of you know and i'm getting gray as well so you know i'm guilty um you know many are stuck in their old ways they think that the letter of credit can only work you know if all the documents are original if all the electronic documents that are presented are uh you know legally accepted all around the globe or can be used all around the globe the letter of credit is a payment instrument it is a risk mitigation and also it can be used to obtain financing and it is a conditional payment instrument so as the practitioners know you know a letter of credit can be payable against a simple thing as even a you know an an invoice you know you can make it as simple as you want to of course you would like to have some proof of performance you would like to have you know for instance a title document passing so i would say the bare minimum would be you know have have an invoice and have an electronic bill of lading in it um also from a physical supply chain you know you have to work with your clients to see okay which documents do you really need to support transaction when do you need to how do you need them can they be digital does the local port or the customs authority you know accept an electronic document and if they don't do you have a process in place to cover that my point here on this slide is that you know part of the paradigm shift is that one has to accept that it's a digital transition phase the world is not completely digital yet we have to think about ways and workarounds to make things work like for instance sometimes you would have to have still a paper bill of lading at the port of discharge because for whatever reason fortunately we see that things are changing rapidly at this moment as well so think about accepting the way that not everything is perfect yet but you have to go on the journey to get it done and unfortunately now with the crisis or fortunately now with the crisis there is suddenly a push um even at you know local level at ministry governments uh um or or authorities that are finally opening up to go digital quickly as well so it works so let me go to the next one and this is this is my my last slide so what are the things to consider one of the main topics to consider if you start to work with electronic documents and e-presentations it requires a solid legal framework and a rule book it needs to be governed by rules and regulations so everybody knows what is my role what is my liability how do i have to handle something why can i use an electronic document around the globe why can i present it to a bank why will the bank accept it as a presentation under a letter of credit so regardless you know how things are covered in local legislations for electronic documents to work amongst the parties involved you need a solid legal framework also the way you transfer these documents um i know there's a there's a search in in in using emails um how secure are the emails right and also you know if you send a document over email um you know can it be tampered with can there can it be you know altered so ideally when documents go from one part to another party you want to make sure that it's still the original document and ideally of course that there's also a title registry which we have of course as well if you work with the letters of credit themselves you know the traditional ones actually work perfectly for e presentations however you have to look into the wording of the letter of credit you know some things have to be different when you enable e-presentations and of course you have to make sure that they the applicable rules are mentioned there in in our case of course the eucp the 2.0 version also i think you know it's you have to take a holistic view you have to take one step back and you look at the overall transaction where it comes you know to the carrier to the buyer to the seller to the banks involved and then really look what is needed where at a minimum to make it work and if it doesn't work fully digital how can you cope with the certain areas to make sure that it still works there what i also see from a financing perspective is you know if banks you know finance and especially also in lots of credit they also tend to find us a lot um what we have as well is is the ebl pledge functionality where you can pledge a bill of lading and you know when it's pledged over bolero you know you can be sure you're the only pledgee holder at that moment in time because they can only be pledged uh one at the time so that's why we have a title registry which covers that pledging functionality as well and also two final statements corporate clients they will use multiple carriers they will use multiple trade lanes they will use financial institutions so i think you know having the network having the connections being able to flexible to move with your clients and also see yeah sometimes they will use open account transactions sometimes they will use a letter of credit or they will use other instruments maybe even blockchain instruments so it's important to be connected and the last bullet i would like to say it's not about technology it's not just about technology it is about adoption it's about trust you know does it work has it worked before can i use it and it's about the user experience it needs to be simple it needs to be easy to use it needs to be clear and it needs to make have clear advantages to the clients so i think that's about i think that's about my 10 minutes hopefully that's really interesting jaco thanks a lot i'm going to pick up on on some of those really interesting points in the rapid fire q a okay um alexander please good afternoon uh i'm alex galandras i'm the ceo one of the co-founders of stocks uh i also uh was a maritime lawyer for many years qualified in the uk and us before setting up stocks and most recently i also wear a couple of icc hats i've been a member of the advisory board for about three years and i'm co-chair of the digitization group for the last year and a half stocks focuses on providing paperless trade and trade finance solutions um for us we look at that as i.t and legal we've talked a lot about legal today i'll talk a little bit more about it but also we talked about change management and project management change management is a big element in electronic documents understanding how to to move and transition to paperless is incredibly important we service um we will hit 50 000 companies uh this month which is a pretty exciting milestone for us we have three prongs of solution uh the first is secure electronic title documents this is our docx solution for document exchange so that's electronic bills of lading electronic warehouse warrants so this is the solution that banks use for e-presentation under letters of credit or collections but we also recognize that full digitization is difficult and not everyone can immediately jump to end-to-end digital so we have a number of solutions that we think of as transition or automation technologies a number that have been used by banks dot cab is a solution that aggregates data to draft documents facilitates online approvals uh internally within an organization and across supply chains and can manage all non-title documents and transfer documents and data through the solution we have a solution set called called adp which facilitates automation of back-end bank processes so this is uses ocr and supervised machine learning to extract data and then uses the same ai to automate intra-document checks uh doc versus lc checks compliance check session screening checks and the like we've just launched a replacement to the swift tsu which is called cmatch and we have a solution for corporate to multi-bank messaging essentially for letter credit guarantees standby issuance and then our third prong is certificates of origin where we essentially can provide with the largest certificate of origin provider in the world with 317 chambers in in 20 countries so we've talked about a number of problems with ebl system we'll start with reality number one uh electronic bills of lading are complicated right so the three of us on this phone today represent less than one percent of all bills of lading in the world and that's around despite the fact that none of us are newbies right as gaddy said he's been around for five years stop celebrated our 15th anniversary uh last week and balera has actually be n around for 32 years so this isn't the simplest problem to solve but there is a new reality in addition to that which is the world has changed uh prior to this pandemic stocks or our certificate of origin platform essa would sign up an average of ten chambers per year ten chambers a year and one new country every two years what we've seen in the last few months is we've signed up 54 chambers in just four months so obviously a massive jump 11 times the normal we signed up five new countries 25 times the norm and i think probably one of the themes that's come out of today is that paperless trading has essentially moved from a nice to have to a must-have solution that allows trade to to continue dave's mentioned a couple of problems steve's mentioned a couple of problems let's look at what we think are probably the four largest problems rules unique enabled icc rules legal validity the international treaties that deal with paper paper bills of lading did not allow for electronic or most of them are what the us versions from 1920s the rest of the world is is typically based on on a treaty from the 1970s obviously they were forward-thinking enough to allow for electronic um so the international treaties dealing with transfer of title basically don't deal with electronic uh equally local laws don't yet deal with electronic this was the model law and electronic transferable records that dave mentioned that is a model law to change that currently i think that law has only been enacted in bahrain so we've got a little bit of way to go for that to really become a major thing but singapore is working hard on it and a number of other countries are too so how do you solve that you have a legal framework and all the three of us have an igp club approved legal framework which is the minimum starting point the next starting point from a bank perspective is you need to ensure that an authorized signatory has signed off on that legal agreement because if the person who signed up to the legal agreement wasn't authorized to buy in the company your bill of lading will not be valid and thus your security will not be valid so pretty important thing to consider we've talked about the network uh bills of lading are like a fax machine if you're the only company in the world with a fax machine it's not very useful so you need the network whether that's counterparty corporates counterparty banks you need that network another issue that we've come across a lot is customs in a lot of countries customs to my paper originals in fact sometimes customs brokers demand paper originals so it's important to understand what will customs accept if you're dealing with electronic bills of lading and you go into a country and you cannot provide paper to clear customs you have a problem you facilitated the trade transaction from a financial perspective but obviously not from a physical perspective now all these problems can and have been solved dave mentioned uh that the icc released eucp 2.0 and eurc last year so that was a big step forward in e-enabling the rule sets that was the first version of an electronic version of the dot collection rules for example um legal validity as as we mentioned we all have an ig approved legal agreement one of the other things that we focus a lot on is ensuring by our in-house legal team that the agreement is validly executed i.e executed by stronghold authority to find that organization or group from a network perspective we tend to focus on a suite of solutions to allow banks and corporates to digitize at their own pace and that seems to be pretty successful for us because we we build a pretty large network from it we also work with a lot of partners and and that is a big part of our approach over the last two years there's an open api that allows third-party platforms to integrate our ebl solution directly into contour which is a bank letter of credit solution set that was that came out of voltron mind hub who's a trade execution platform that's digitizing the metals and minerals business that was led by by seven of the largest oil companies in the world doing the same for for energy gateway is is a consortium of energy companies and chinese banks so by partnering with other people we we expand the network on the customs side we have ebl's already being used in seven countries 70 countries and we're either in trials or talking to customs about outputs that they will accept for another 11. so again we've come to we found workarounds for every one of these problems in terms of building the network building custom solutions ensuring the legal validity and so forth but so what does it take to get started as a bank um well banks are complicated you have a lot of internal processes um we have a lot of experience of onboarding banks either at a country level or at a global level once you have gone through the various steps we can actually get you live in a very short time so the first branch we can get live within a week and after that we can add new branches within a couple of days so what are the technical requirements essentially you need internet access there's no hardware or software to download with our solution from a set up and onboarding perspective we'll give you handbooks that will help you as a bank understand everything you could possibly want to know about udls plus the same for your exporter corporates plus the same for your import of corporates so we're going to provide you with all the information you could possibly need we'll also assist you with all the change management and internal sign-offs be that security be that legal uh be that process approval uh we'll support you through training and through go live with one team and then we'll continue to support you 24 7 365 on an ongoing basis so essentially we have offices all over the globe to help you with that so essentially we look at transitioning to electronic documents as as a project as as jacob said this is not a single i download a piece of software and i'm done forever and we'll support you through that adoption cycle because it's critically important that this becomes a seamless experience for you and for your corporates and that's all i had i think i have a rant sorry about that no it's perfect alex thank you very much um and you've already answered a lot of my questions that was uh that was really very helpful one thing that's come through i think from all of the speakers is that um we mustn't wait the the world hasn't gone digitally yet um and so there are there are issues um with banks and and their clients going digital um but but we can't wait we need governments and for anyone who's listening that's uh that's on the sovereign side of life governments to adopt the model laws from unsatral on digitization we need global adoption of the legal entity identifier that we all know about and of course we're all collaborating to create digital standards in trade um which is uh an initiative that's going to be up and running in this in the second quarter um but but we mustn't wait um do you want to uh sort of rapid fire you want to talk about some of the some of the workarounds i mean you've already mentioned a couple of them but is there anything else you guys want to add to that quickly before i get into some other detail can i maybe mention something steve so so what what we noticed from uh from a bolero perspective and i'm sure the same must be true for wave and for uh stocks as well is that uh we see especially in the month of march of this year which would sort of covet really you know hit business we see a huge increase of of the issuance of edls however what we don't see yet is a big spike in the in on the e-presentation side so that basically tells me a few things is that the corporates are already switching for the open account transactions to start using ebl's more which also makes sense because of course it's easier in an open account setup you know to switch more quickly than it is for you know amending lcs or issuing new letters of credit subject to eucp and making sure that the whole ecosystem is up and running you know including the banks but you can already see that there's a shift happening right now in the open account space um so i think from a banking perspective and that's the angle for today we should still remember and i also mentioned it in the icc uh groups where i'm also a member of is we have to think that global trade 80 and in some countries like india even 86 percent is still done on open account so the shifts we see happening in open account will also eventually hit you know the traditional trade so i think that's another uh plus to you know prepare to your point stephen and wait no longer uh to to to make sure that the banking environment is also uh preparing for to shift to digital yes yes steve so we've seen something similar we've got a mining company who decided to use electronic documents as their business continuity plan so they went to 31 steel mills in china that we had didn't already have on our network of which 21 have now signed up five are um in the process of reviewing our legal agreement and six we haven't yet been introduced to um but those 21 have been signed up and onboarded within a few weeks but some of them can't transact because there's some banks missing or some branches missing um and and one of the the issues from working from home people is it's already um a workaround to people's normal processes and now changing and accepting electronic documents at the same time is definitely going to be a challenge for the banks um and i think ultimately uh a lot of us here have a lot of experience and we can help you through that process yes um from my end i will actually i'll be happy to to actually mention that one of the main i would say issues that the banks used to as i mentioned they used to take all the heavy lifting which means that the bank will have to ensure that for example the bill flooding can be released at the customer at the destination in paper they are not checking it so i would say that the major change by having the corporates and the in the carriers that are now promoting the service from their end that it's not the problem of the banks anymore and when you are looking at trade from the eyes of a carrier or a corporate um they don't let the facts confuse them let's say like that which means that we've had of course when you have a letter of credit everything will be by the book based on the requirements of the letter of credit but in an open account and as mentioned many will move to electronic originals instead of a way bills because this reduces the risk even without banking being involved um so in many cases we have electronic documents even going to brazil for example which is a very complicated market and and the carriers will help their corporate to to solve it and to ensure that it can be released at the destination same thing goes to other let's say more complicated markets uh at this point going digital will actually mean for a bank that he's just digitizing his own business from his own egoistic principles i would say or his only egoistic interest while this the problems of customs the problem with chamber of commerce the problem with everything else will be just dealt with the other using the other participants now it's not just the banks and icc who are promoting it now it's practically everyone uh so it's not just the creation of the network it's also the finding solutions for everything else we've had all types of workarounds and it's it's even impossible to to give examples because every scenario existed between the electronic presentation of just scanned documents not the bill of lading of course but others because some certificate authority in i don't know somewhere in the world just doesn't really don't have internet so all the problems are being solved yeah and it's not just by the banks yeah yeah i think there's there is a recognized imperative obligation at each and every component part of the trade ecosystem companies ports customs you know banks importers logistics everyone needs to get with it it's just this is just too uh too serious not to we're putting too much in in jeopardy so if i'm a bank i'm thinking about uh moving forward i mean just the implementation alex you made it sound pretty easy but um i mean is it is it really that easy the implementation into into my bank with integrating with my systems and then having to onboard all of my clients it sounds like a nightmare um but but it but it's not question no i think those are two questions um there's three parts to a bank moving to electronic documents one is the internal sign-offs there's going to be change management they're going to be security they're going to be legal that is not quick the fastest we see in a bank do those is a couple of months on average it takes a bank a year actually adopting the solution because for us there's no software to involve to adopt um we can set you up and train you within two days um so actual use development documents going live is easy building up the network also takes time although again um that's not only the responsibility of the bank we work with the bank we have an entire team whose job is to build help the bank build up the network help the banks corporates build up their network so essentially that is a sort of partnership approach i guess in in digitizing the network thanks uh just very briefly if you want to mention anything jacco yes i totally agree it's it's the the the internal decision-making process in banks with all these various stakeholders is is really what's the most time-consuming you know getting getting them up and running trained signed up uh using the system which can be used as a standalone you know that's that's not the the part that takes time that's also from our and uh the technology is never the problem the the sign-offs um this is one of the main reasons why the the customer demand is is very important we we will never approach a bank unless we have very concrete demand from its own customer now of course the customer will usually use multiple banks but they will select one um that they want to to partner with in the beginning now that it's it's not a matter of uh it's it's just adapting to the new future we definitely see it everyone here on the line uh on the webinar can see it and from the technology perspective i'm sure that every service provider can provide you either a complete standalone uh on a cloud or local installation everyone is very flexible the technology is never the problem it's they actually believing that the business will be digitized and now we can see that it is happening and the fastest to adapt and and and maybe click advantage in many cases yeah and gadi may be further to your point as well is like what you see with the the the other digitization projects where banks are involved those are usually you know uh proof of concepts and and and and you know trying out new ways to see if there's client demand where we tap into with our solutions we tap into business as usual you know things that the banks have been doing for hundreds of years sometimes uh and then suddenly you you bring in a new element of digitization and then as you know some people just start to you know oh this is this is new this is scary you know i've been doing things you know the same way for decades in my in my current position how do i change how do i adopt so that's also another challenge that we face um you know from a business usual perspective yeah 100 actually i do enjoy that it moved to a panel and so another very interesting point that we are seeing is that when banks approach a corporate they will contact their uh financial department which in many cases they don't even see the paper so they don't suffer from it so it's much harder for a bank putting aside the regulatory barrier of or the regulatory concern i don't know the policy not to a a promote a third party service when a bank is contacting a corporate it will go to the financial department which in many cases are not even seeing the bills of leading so they definitely are not suffering from it now they care about a completely different set of issues which is what is the cost of the financing which means that the have different problems when a carrier goes to a corporate he goes directly to the person who is handling the paper and that was a faced a loss of bill of lading so it's also which means everything has changed and i personally which mean that i believe that the main thing that got that we get the industry to to be digitized and the fastest bank that to adopt will actually enjoy is the absolute decentralization of the requirements of course i'm pushing the world decentralized whenever i can uh when you decentralize the effort from the banking to everyone else um it's it's a completely different way of onboarding um and we all see could you guys uh talk thank you for that could you guys talk just uh very quickly to to cost how does that work is it astronomical is that uh um could you could you give the viewers just sort of a sense for that please because i'm sure that's daunting for a lot of people who may be nervous to ask the more the better what the more costs are better of course i mean we take it yeah so basically uh from from a bullier perspective we have a very simple module it's an annual subscription and it's a cost per transaction and there's no uh you know one price or setup uh you know at all it depends on you know the market it depends on you know the counterparties it depends on the countries but usually that's a that's a very easy model from our perspective yeah we have tranched transactions uh with discounts for countries in emerging markets thank you yes we actually charge the carriers and not not so much the banks say at this point uh it's it's a slightly different project i would say a product so we charge the issuer or the originator of the document so if a bank issues a guarantee he will pay but for bills of lading he is not actually required to pay thank you um quickly on compliance uh anti-money laundering and so on um uh i see some uh some sort of questions coming up uh could you just uh speak very briefly to uh the role that uh that the digitization of documents plays in in compliance and uh and operation risk please shall i start okay so of course compliance is is becoming an ever increasing nightmare for the banks right it's it's the the the cost of you know running compliance departments and making sure you can screen everything the moment that you are moving towards digitization and for instance you you are able to have your document electronically available that already you know reduces the risks of you know good documents getting lost or um you know uh fraud being committed you know like people uh changing things in documents that you don't really want them to change but also you know having access to digital documents can make compliance screening much easier um either through your existing tools or tools you know that i'm sure all of us can you know partner up and and and provide to you often sometimes the banks do still want to stick to their existing compliance systems but it's one thing you know if you have to for instance scan paper documents uh and then use that data to do an automated compliance check if you have native electronic documents of course the the the the quality of the data is much better gentlemen i want to thank you very much um for participating in this panel i think it's been really helpful i've learned a lot and uh if the the viewers the listeners want to contact any of the companies um i'm sure you can find them very easily um through the the links that we've provided on the webinar but if if not for some reason just just come into contact with us um and we'll uh we'll direct you accordingly um as we've discussed this is a really really critical issue on like on a historic kind of uh level i don't think that's an overstatement to ensure the safety of uh global trade and supply chains and getting people their food and medicine and and so on so on and so forth so uh whatever it takes let's uh let's move forward um uh we'll be uh we'll be planning on doing some of these webinars uh i think with some regularity uh maybe uh maybe once a month so please stay tuned we'll uh if you have any ideas for um for topics please feel free to share them thank you so much again and thanks to uh icc academy for facilitating thank you thank you thank you very much everyone else everyone thank you so as a reminder we are hosting live broadcast on this topic in addition to other trade topics like the incoterms rules cryptocurrency leadership coaching and many others so sign up our website for free and subscribe to our youtube channel and ladies and gentlemen this has been another episode of the kovid19 briefing see you next time thank you everyone well done thomas thank you bye going to radio or television thanks thanks captain ahab exactly go forward everyone will leave you alone cheers steve appreciate it thanks thanks everyone guys thank you thank you [Music] you