109 dated and mailed to the bank,” says Hazou. “The big move at the moment is to scan those documents into a system through optical character recognition and apply rules related to letter of credit to check the documents for compliance and identify trade-based money laundering with AI. With certain trade documents now able to be provided in digital format, it means that bank processing can be carried out more efficiently.” Microsoft is collaborating with several partners to develop solutions for digitising trade documents that can be processed automatically with AI, including Cleareye.AI, Conpend and Traydstream, which all power their solutions with Azure. These documents include letters of credit for trade finance and bills of lading for supply chain finance, which are issued by carriers to acknowledge receipt of cargo for shipments. The internet of things (IoT) is also helping banks to improve their trade finance functions with real-time data, specifically in supply chain finance. “During the pandemic, one bank asked us to help it monitor the temperature of hundreds of batches of vaccines,” says Hazou. “The bank needed to be sure that the value of the cargo would remain high to benefit from its investment in the supply chain, which it referred to as a ‘chill chain’ because the vaccines needed to be kept below a certain temperature to remain effective and bought by government organisations. “Under the right conditions, IoT sensors could continuously track and report the temperature of the vaccine batches in real time, ensuring any deviations were promptly addressed to maintain the cargo’s integrity and value. IoT data can also be used to track transport routes, weather and geopolitical risks that can affect the duration and financing of shipments.” Microsoft partner Trade Ledger has developed a solution to help with supply chain queries like this. The firm’s Working Capital Copilot uses generative AI, powered by Azure OpenAI Service, to answer mundane and repetitive trade and supply chain finance questions in Microsoft Teams so banks can better serve their clients. Examples of possible questions might include: “when can I expect my payment for the shipment of goods?” and “what documentation do I need to complete for cross-border trade?” “Users can ask simple natural language questions and the copilot will transform them into queries about the business and respond with the answers that they need,” says Martin McCann, CEO of Trade Ledger. “Through this, we’re making conversational analysis available for everyone who needs to see it for their corporate customers.” This technology represents a shift in how banks can interact with and support their clients more effectively. “Traditionally, banking is a passive business where you go to a bank to do something,” says Hazou. “But with all of these insights from data, banks are in a position to provide more value-added services that go right to the centre of what clients need.” FINANCIAL SERVICES Progress is being made to digitise trade finance operations that date back to the 15th century House of Medici Photo: iStock/VitalyEdush
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