While the payments journey has enjoyed widespread digitalisation, with SWIFT gpi playing a major part in this transition, trade finance is a tougher nut to crack, but it is getting there.
Trade Finance TV talks to SWIFT’s Head of Trade & Supply Chain, Huny Garg, and Senior Product Manager, Bridget Cosgrave, about how SWIFT is supporting banks and corporates with trade payments. SWIFT has around 2,000 corporate members in addition to its 9,000 banks as members. These corporates are driving digitalisation of transaction processes to reduce operational, legal and credit risk.
“Many corporates still have highly manual processes for documentary credits,” says Garg. He explains that around 50 of them use the SWIFT messaging service MT 798, a digital envelope that accommodates import and export letters of credit and guarantees in a multibank environment., and that this needs more bank support.
“We have this remarkable trust with the community, says Cosgrave. And this applies to trade finance messages. She adds, “A big part of our brief is the bring the key SWIFT gpi principles, to the trade finance use case.,” these are trackability, transparency, service level agreement with banks and the ability for all parties on to have an observer function along the transaction journey. Tune into Trade Finance TV in advance of Sibos London 2019 to hear more.
