Standard Chartered and Siemens Allies for Blockchain-Pilot Project
Standard Chartered, in its latest statement, announced a collaboration with Siemens and TradeIX to carry out an industry-first client pilot to create an end-to-end blockchain-based smart guarantees proposition in trade finance.
With a view to transform the traditionally paper-intensive Bank Guarantees business, this is the first blockchain client pilot that fully digitizes the process, from initiation of the bank guarantee to the claim handling.
Samuel Mathew, Global Head, Trade Products, Standard Chartered, said: “The future of trade is going to be all about data. To this end, we are excited to be the first in the industry to co-create this solution with Siemens Financial Services and explore innovative ways on how we can digitise trade and leverage real-time data to deliver efficiency gains and transform the way trade finance is conducted. Technology is core to Standard Chartered’s strategy and we remain fully committed to delivering the next generation of best-in-class trade products to facilitate trade flows for our clients across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
The release further highlighted that unlike a letter of credit which involves multiple parties, performance details and over 100 pages of documents, a commercial bank guarantee is a much simpler instrument to digitize. This solution will enable Siemens to digitize its guarantee process for customers with large transaction volumes in the future, spanning issuance, amendments and claims, eliminating the multiple touch-points and inefficiencies which are inherent in the paper-intensive process today.
Michael Bueker, Chief Financial Officer, Siemens LLC added, “While digitalization is revolutionizing whole industries, incorporating digital trade finance solution into our daily operations is an important step. Especially at Siemens, as a digitalization pioneer, this move is part of our strategic mission of going digital in all arenas. This will streamline our processes and make our trade finance operations smoother, faster and more efficient. We are delighted to partner with Standard Chartered in leading such a game-changing transformation which will help our customers go digital in their guarantee and claim processes and achieve higher efficiency.”
The pilot began in March 2018 and will be fully completed later this year. The proposition is based on auto-executing smart contracts, leveraging the Corda Distributed Ledger and application layer provided by TradeIX.
Further commenting, Rob Barnes, TradeIX said, “We believe that global trade is at the cusp of multi-level digital transformation which will revolutionize the entire business and operating model. As the platform provider, we are excited to be involved with Standard Chartered and Siemens Financial Services to help script this journey and bring the power of the distributed ledger to solve the challenges facing today’s trade ecosystem.”
