An industry-wide push: the digital transformation of international trade

By Alisa DiCaprio, Head of Trade and Supply Chain at R3 

As Head of Trade and Supply Chain at R3, Alisa is responsible for trade strategy, standards and governance design. Alisa was previously a senior economist at the Asian Development Bank and holds a PhD from MIT.

Trade finance is an industry notorious for its stubbornness in the face of change. But the emergence of new digital technologies in recent years has fuelled a period of intense innovation and the status quo is finally shifting on an industry-wide scale.

One of the major reasons international trade has been so slow to evolve is its inherent complexity. Because of its cross-jurisdictional nature, the industry is heavily intermediated – predominantly by banks that help to facilitate transactions and provide the financing behind them, but also by insurers, customs officials and other market participants. All of these participants are now beginning to reap the benefits of digital transformation.

Out with the old, in with the new 

Many of the processes and technologies underpinning trade finance have not been modernised in decades. The result is that those transactions continue to rely on paper-heavy processing, unsuitable for the current digital age. Traditional technology required corporates to log into multiple portals and juggle relationships and documentation for each shipment. In addition, businesses must navigate the growing threat of cyber-attacks, changing regulations, and ever-changing sanctions lists. Despite this complexity, cumbersome and time-consuming paper-based exchanges are still commonplace.

Take, for example, invoice financing. While a common activity, managing invoice payments and terms can be slow and inefficient for companies and their trading partners. They must navigate different currencies and jurisdictions, each with unique requirements in terms of contract terms and payments.

By digitising these manual processes and superseding ageing legacy systems, a technology such as blockchain has a real impact on reducing the costs, risks and delays to participants involved in trade finance. If applied effectively, the technology has the potential to unlock what the Asian Development Bank has identified as a potential $1.5 trillion opportunity in global trade finance. Companies of all sizes will benefit from better visibility into trading relationships and easier access to financing options, beyond point-to-point relationship ps, to a global network of trading parties.

Trade, on ledger

Blockchain’s integration across the financial services ecosystem has delivered some encouraging results so far. While the rollout has been more gradual than some of the more over-enthusiastic predictions, many see it as a brilliant innovation capable of remedying a lot of the operational pain-points perturbing financial services. As such, there is growing debate about how blockchain can provide solutions to solve many of the problems facing trade financing.

One such solution is real-time visibility, which is available via permissioned access to authorised network users, and gives buyers and sellers unprecedented transparency into the status of their transactions.

This single source of truth and use of smart contracts could remove a number of inefficiencies in the paper-heavy processes that exist in trade finance, such as negotiations of letters of credit. In addition, settlement finality removes the need for intermediaries to perform reconciliations. All of these applications could streamline the entire process.

Cross-industry digitisation 

In order to move towards a truly digitised and connected ecosystem for trade finance, mass adoption on a global scale is essential. This elusive network effect can only be achieved if technology players prioritise forward-thinking and inclusive integration solutions that lower the barriers to entry for all types of companies involved in the trading process.

If only a handful of firms adopt a blockchain solution for invoice financing, for example, the solution is useless if one company needs to trade with another that is outside this circle of early adopters. All the other benefits of blockchain such as speed, efficiency and lower costs mean nothing if you cannot use the platform to connect with the necessary counterparties.

Like any piece of enterprise technology, blockchain will be most useful when used in conjunction with existing systems. The reality is that most businesses are not full digitally native and so will continue to rely on legacy systems – all to different extents – in the near future.

The key to unlocking blockchain’s true potential, therefore, is not to try and oust these but to make sure the technology fits into the right places, with minimal cost and disruption to a firm’s day-to-day business. Put simply, integration holds the single most important key to rewiring the $8 trillion global trade finance market.