The Bolero collaborative trade finance service enables the automation of the end-to-end lifecycle of the Letter of Credit and Guarantee instruments for both Importers and Exporters over a highly secure neutral and standardised channel. In addition, Bolero uniquely provides support for fully electronic presentation of documents including a proven electronic bill of lading (eBL). A fast growing number of Corporates are now utilising the Bolero service in collaboration with their partner banks, clearly positioning Bolero as the channel of choice for multi-bank trade finance.

Sara Joyce, Executive Managing Director, Head of International Financial Institutions and Trade Finance at BMO Capital Markets, said: "BMO is very focused on the requirements of its corporate customers. Following an enquiry from one of our major customers, it quickly became clear that adoption of this service would provide significant benefits. We are delighted that we are now in a position to fully support the Bolero service and we are interested to see how we can utilise this service with other BMO customers."

"We are very excited with BMO's decision to provide the Bolero multi-bank service, particularly as they have shown real leadership in the Canadian market." said Claire Buchanan, SVP, Global Field Operations at Bolero. "We have quickly established a positive and constructive partnership with BMO and look forward to working closely with their trade finance specialists as they go live with their first corporate customer in the very near future."

Bolero provides comprehensive Trade Finance applications delivered as web-based SaaS (software as a service) solutions enabling speedy adoption, minimal infrastructure costs and flexible use. Underlying these applications is the unique Bolero electronic multi-banking channel solution which ensures security, legal certainty, non-repudiation and document originality. All Bolero services are deployed for effortless upgrade to full multi-bank use deployed for effortless upgrade to full multi-bank use for corporate customers, while at the same time providing a single multi-corporate electronic channel for each bank. Bolero prevents both communities from needing to support multiple bank and/or corporate specific processes, interfaces and data formats, clearly driving standardisation in this space.

"As the number of banks supporting Bolero rapidly increases, we are very pleased to welcome a major Canadian bank to the Bolero community of corporates, commodity traders, financial institutions and logistics service providers," says Arthur Vonchek, CEO at Bolero. "The growth of our community is based on rapid deployment, live operation and proven success and, of course, the continued increase in the number of banks and corporates transacting live on our multi-bank service."

Separately, Bolero has announced the commercial availability of its new Presentation Dashboard service, the latest addition to Bolero's ePresentation services which supports fully electronic document presentation including the incorporation of an electronic bill of lading (eBL). Although fully electronic presentation of documents under an export letter of credit is already available as a live service in Bolero, the new Presentation Dashboard brings a significant number of new user options, comprehensive presentation management and automation features and new corporate to bank message types in support of all forms of electronic presentation through to confirmation of payment. As with all Bolero services, this is bank independent and designed to support straight through processing (STP) for both the exporter and for the participating banks.

"We have seen significant interest in the ability to offer robust and fit-for-purpose solutions in support of the whole range of ePresentation options, including pre-checking, direct inspection and full end-to-end electronic document presentation involving all necessary parties" says Claire Buchanan, SVP of Global Operations at Bolero.

Ham Patel, VP Client Engagement at Bolero adds "Attempts by some companies to use file transfer channels or other secure electronic communication channels have met with little success, failing to replicate the delivery certainty of each and every document, failing to guarantee individual document originality (particularly when forwarded to a third party), and of course failing to underpin the whole process with a comprehensive and globally applicable legal infrastructure. By contrast, the original Bolero service was designed specifically to address all these issues, so it is a natural consequence that we are focusing on further developments in this area".

"The Presentation Dashboard is both a comprehensive management tool as well as the primary user experience for our end-to-end electronic presentation services", says Luc Volckaert, CTO at Bolero. "We have developed this new service in close collaboration with a number of our exporter customers and their partner banks and in particular with a leading global exporter who has been utilising the Bolero Export LC service for some time and is a thought leader in driving efficiency and automation to the document presentation processes."

The Presentation Dashboard provides a single workstation for managing and optimizing presentations for settling a transaction under an export documentary credit (letter of credit). This is achieved through encouraging, enabling and ensuring; timeliness, consistency with the current letter of credit with its amendments and compliance with UCP 600 and eUCP version 1.1.

The Presentation Dashboard will support all combinations of automation, electronic and manual documents including:

· Paper presentation, manual bank response

· Paper presentation, electronic bank response

· Mixed (electronic and paper) presentation, electronic bank response

· Electronic presentation, electronic bank response

The new Presentation Dashboard functions include:

· Creation of the Presentation Instruction, inheriting the data from the LC and using this data to create the instruction for the settlement bank. The Presentation Instruction is fully eUCP enabled as it supports paper, mixed and electronic document.

· Internal compliance engine guiding the user to create a compliant presentation.

· Sophisticated support for the selection of the settlement based on the information in the LC and company defined preferred settlement banks.

· Supports examinations, direct presentation, honouring, negotiations and substitution.

· Automatic generation of the Draft and Letter of Indemnity if applicable.

· Comprehensive handling of discrepancies and integrated support for representations.

· End-to-end management of the Presentation from the creation to the payment using the Presentation Dashboard.

· Direct coupling of the Presentation with the corresponding LC for the automatic update of the outstanding balance.

· Extensive monitoring capabilities using filters allowing the selection of Presentation records.

· Audit and tracing capabilities.

"The Presentation Dashboard is the latest deliverable to the live Bolero service in support of electronic document presentation, now one of our principal areas of business focus" says Arthur Vonchek, CEO of Bolero. "This is an exciting opportunity to respond to keen market demand through the delivery of leading edge solutions, built collaboratively and based on proven legal and technology foundations which deliver substantive business value, particularly to large exporters and their trade communities."