Bolero has today announced the commercial availability of the latest version of its powerful Multi-Bank Trade Finance solution incorporating a number of enhanced features to meet the specific requirements of oil commodity traders.
The Bolero multi-bank service automates the end-to-end lifecycle of the Letter of Credit (LC) and Guarantee instruments for both Importers and Exporters removing substantially the cost, complexity, discrepancies and time delays associated with the traditional paper based or partially electronic processes. It has been increasingly adopted by corporates and their banks as the standard channel for multi-bank trade finance.
Bolero already provides a number of features critical to support the requirements of Oil Traders, including support for both structured and unstructured Letters of Credit and the efficient management of large LCs typical in this industry. Incorporated in this latest release are a number of additional functional capabilities including support for "Red Clauses" and large Letters of Intent (LOIs). This release also includes the latest version of Bolero's clause and template management feature, allowing the creation and data-activated use of a library of standard and conditional clauses and conditions.
"There is increasing demand from corporates for multi-bank trade finance solutions and at the same time a large and fast growing community of banks who are now enabled to communicate via the Bolero multi-bank electronic channel", says Arthur Vonchek, CEO of Bolero. "The withdrawal of the Telex has also stimulated change in certain geographies. With most of the large Oil Banks already providing live Bolero services, we have for a while viewed Oil Traders as a key target market and have invested to ensure the Bolero channel meets the needs of this particular commodity trading group."
"There are a number of issues characteristic to the oil trading environment which historically presented a barrier to the adoption of generic trade finance applications." says Luc Volckaert, Chief Technology Officer at Bolero. "As the number of corporates and banks using the Bolero multi-bank service has increased wewe have invested in the extension of the Bolero platform to provide robust support for this group of customers, who historically have not been well served by alternative trade finance solutions. These enhancements have been developed to enhance the Bolero channel as well as to provide oil trader specific capability in support of applications from Bolero's certified partners."
Bolero is based on a secure messaging platform which ensures interoperability as well as total security, non-repudiation and document originality between the corporate and its banks in stark contrast to alternative multi-bank portals which require significant manual interaction from banks or a commitment to expensive custom interfaces.
Uniquely Bolero provides both a multi-bank electronic channel for the corporate customer while simultaneously providing a multi-customer electronic channel for the bank, ensuring each participant is protected from customer or bank specific process, interfaces or data formats.