SIA launches Digital Trade Finance solution

By Megha Bhattacharya

SIA today announced the launch of a new platform in a bid to allow banks to fully digitise trade finance processes, thus enabling corporates and SMEs to manage documentary credit dossiers. The new ‘Digital Trade Finance’ solution supports the internationalisation process of companies and leverage new business opportunities with foreign counterparts. The new platform allows banks to simplify to a high degree back-office operations and Global Transaction Banking internal functions through paperless processing of dossiers.

“With the launch of the new Digital Trade Finance platform, SIA strengthens its commitment towards banks in supporting the internationalization process of corporates and SMEs. Today more than ever, companies need to simplify processes in order to focus on new business opportunities. Thanks to SIA’s technology, they now have a digital tool that facilitates access to foreign markets. The decision by Banca Popolare di Sondrio to choose SIA’s experience confirms our position as a reliable and innovative partner in the digital transformation process”, commented Daniele Savarè, Innovation & Business Solutions Director of SIA.

Banca Popolare di Sondrio is the first bank to digitise its entire trade finance with the help of SIA’s platform. The “Digital Trade Finance” solution forms a part of SIA EasyWay, the digital payments infrastructure that supports financial institutions and other Payment Service Providers in the adoption and management of SEPA payment and collection instruments, instant payments, cross-border payments and, more generally, the new open banking scenario.

“The innovative project for the digitization of documentary credit dossiers involved our International Service division which, in a proactive manner and thanks to the know-how acquired over years of assisting companies in the Trade Finance sector, was able to support the SIA team in all the stages of study and realization of this new platform”, stated Mario Erba, Vice General Manager of Banca Popolare di Sondrio.

“Our bank has always worked closely with client companies operating in international markets, supporting them with professional and comprehensive services from the early stages of the internationalization process right up to the signing of contracts with foreign counterparts. And it is precisely documentary credits that allow us to mitigate the commercial risks inherent in foreign trade. The dematerialization of this process will allow our bank to respond even more effectively and rapidly to the needs of exporters and importers”, concluded Erba.