Impact of TSU on International Trade
Trade finance related banking business is undergoing continuous transformation. Usage of traditional trade instruments such as letters of credit (LC) are declining and corporates are moving to open account. Today, it is estimated that 80% of international trade is on open account. With increased usage of open account, the banks are likely to lose revenue while facing increased risk and possible disintermediation.
Open account is bad news for both banks as well as exporters. Since the banks are only involved in the final settlement, they can no longer look into the underlying transaction, limiting the opportunity to offer competitive risk and financing solutions. Similarly for exporters, who not only are forced to take on increased risk and responsibility, but also loose access to finance, threatening a loss of working capital and potential loss of liquidity. About 84% of corporates regard improvement in the global trade process as one of their top five initiatives. Estimates suggest that a US$1bn company can free up between US$10m and US$40m in cash by better controlling basic trade processes.
Banks are now being pressurised by large corporates to increase levels of automation and integrate financial transactions with what is happening in the physical supply chain. The corporates are also demanding greater levels of standardisation to improve the flow of information and funds between the corporate, the bank and trading counterparties.
This has lead to the formation of a financial supply chain and also a need for banks to reinvent their service offerings to corporates by providing value-added services, involving risk mitigation, reducing discrepancies in payment streams and improving overall process and the working capital requirements.
The financial value chain is increasingly recognised as an area offering significant potential for generating bottom-line improvements and creating competitive advantage for banks. In order to help banks have a competitive advantage and improve their service offerings, SWIFT along with the Trade Services Advisory Group (TSAG), comprising representatives of 13 banks have come up with TSU to improve the entire financial supply chain.
The Trade Service Utility (TSU) is a data matching and workflow engine whose primary function is to compare the commercial data submitted by banks and report the matching results back to banks. The TSU enables banks to collaborate in the use of messaging standards and infrastructure while leaving scope for them to compete on value-added services. The TSU is a bank-to-bank offering. On one hand it enables banks to utilise the common infrastructure and standards, while bringing in the need to enhance the banks existing trade services systems with added functionality while on other hand it respects the business practices of the corporates without requiring any change. The first release of TSU deals with data matching in purchase order, commercial and transport documents.
LCs are often perceived as expensive and complicated to work with and are often a solution tailored to banks’ internal processes and needs. This has driven corporates towards open account based transactions, which has had a knock-on effect on banks, resulting in loss of revenue and increased risk in transactions on the traditional trade finance services. With open account, the only time a bank gets involved in a transaction is when a payment is made.
LCs mean that the financial supply chain is prone to uncertainty and financial risks for both importers and exporters. Some of these uncertainties include delayed or incomplete shipment, freight charges, custom duties or foreign currency fluctuations, all of which create budget overruns and financial and legal penalties. A failed LC (which occurs in more than 65% of instances) is not only a financial event, but also a supply chain event, since goods stop moving until the LC is resolved, thus increasing the transactional burden on all the parties involved in the trade cycle.
Over the years the trade finance process as a whole has seen a lot of improvements but there are still some significant gaps caused by the uncertainties mentioned above.
One of the biggest problem areas identified in traditional trade finance instruments such as LCs is the process of document matching. Currently banks have a large internal set-up that carries out the matching process manually, which has increased the failure rates. Because of increased manual intervention in document handling process, there is also an increased exception rate of almost 50% arising because of re-keying of information. Even the simplest international trade transaction would have a minimum of 12 individual participants, each of whom has a different role and a different documentary requirement. The failures in the traditional instruments are one of the biggest reasons for the corporates to move to open account. Although international trade with LCs is declining, in business areas where the credit risk is high and the importer/exporter do not know each other, the LC is still preferred for its safety value and may even be increasing in usage.
The biggest challenge now for banks is to design and deliver services that will enable the corporate customer to manage more accurately the receivables and payables functions and lead to a more efficient planning of cash flows. In order to reduce costs and optimise liquidity, banks will require timely and accurate availability of information which will result in significant benefits to importers and exporters. In order to provide financial supply solutions to corporates, banks will have to support all the parties in the entire financial supply chain and have an improved process which can add value to the entire trade cycle.
Despite the changing trend, the corporates are expecting the banks to support all the entities in the entire trade process. Hence the banks are required to help their clients to support supply channels and automate processes in new and different ways from their traditional banking models. In order to remain competitive, banks must respond to the innovation corporates are seeking. There are opportunities for banks to improve their role within the supply chain from the moment a purchase order is placed to payment settlement and inventory reconciliation.
Though moving to open account eliminates the processing and service charges incurred by corporates, it has indirectly increased the burden on their administrative processes. Corporates now have to tackle the documentary processing activities themselves, which were earlier handled by the bank (even though manually) while processing traditional trade instruments. From a bank’s perspective, there is the prospect of servicing corporates on their data-processing needs even in open account transactions, thus creating more options for generating revenue.
With the help of the TSU platform, banks will have to integrate financial and physical supply chain information and improve their service offerings in the following areas:
The banks today are being represented as a trusted party that offers cost effective access to an extensive network and a comprehensive service that supports accurate payment between all the players in the chain. As a service provider, banks, instead of providing services based on an individual trade product basis, will have to accommodate cross-functional demands. They will have to get much closer to the supply chains of the customers and provide non-traditional services. Some of the immediate service offerings that a bank can provide can be linked to the following areas:
The first most important step for the banks to improve their service offering and derive benefits is to adopt a ‘standard, fail-safe channel’ independent of banks, which can be achieved through the TSU. As a data matching and workflow engine, the TSU can help the banks authenticate the transactions by reducing the discrepancy and facilitating the end-to-end transparency of previously isolated business functions.
The TSU offers a set of common standards to facilitate straight-through processing and strengthen the interoperability that is critical to enabling banks to work together in partnership. By sourcing information from one bank and independently matching it to data received from a counterparty bank, the TSU delivers value to both the banks, enhancing reliability of data and reducing risk.
Using the TSU, banks will have to start deriving benefits in the following areas:
For banks that are planning to provide advanced financial supply chain offerings, a second release of TSU in November 2008 will provide additional data, including that for insurance and certificates, and will take bilateral obligations onto a multilateral basis. At present there are only two banks that act as participants on the TSU platform, but the future release will provide the opportunity to bring in third and fourth party banks.
By tracking the content of commercial invoices and transport data sets against a baseline purchase order, the TSU helps banks identify the trigger points. Combining these services with traditional risk management, currency hedging and more innovative import/export financing options, banks can build a supply chain suite to service its customer. The TSU is a significant step forward in enabling banks not only to address gaps in the product range but also to take a more holistic approach to the delivery of supply chain business solutions. It is a step forward to a future way of servicing customer need and responding to ever-changing market dynamics.