Avrio Corporation Success Story

With nearly 150 years in the emerging markets, Standard Chartered Bank is the world’s leading financial institution, with unmatched knowledge and understanding of its customer markets. Headquartered in London, Standard Chartered Bank has over 500 offices in more than 50 countries throughout the Asia Pacific Region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Employing over 30,000 people worldwide, Standard Chartered Bank provides an impressive range of consumer and wholesale financial services.

The Problem

Like many banks, Standard Chartered Bank used local branch offices throughout the Asia Pacific Region, South Asia, and Europe to handle their trade operations. Over time, Standard Chartered Bank found it increasingly difficult to manage their international trade operations due to the complexity of trading scenarios, changes in trading laws and regulations, inefficiencies in manual processes and magnitude of documentation required for each trade transaction. To secure its strategic position in the global economy, make more efficient use of capital expenditures, and improve customer satisfaction, Standard Chartered Bank’s Trade Finance Division decided to re-engineer their trade finance operations.

The Solution

Avrio Corporation helped Standard Chartered Bank to develop a FileNet-based document management and workflow system called the Global Trade Re-engineering System.  The Global Trade Re-engineering project required a two-pronged approach to remedy the existing trade problems: (1) modify existing business practices to eliminate the inefficiencies of a manual and error-prone paper processes; and, (2) use leading-edge technologies to develop a Trade Finance System that supported all aspects of trade finance from letter of credit processing, to customer document entry and inquiry to collection operations.

The system incorporated document imaging, rules-based workflow, database tables, legacy accounting and collections systems, messaging systems and web-based technologies into a cohesive system that is used throughout the bank. Distributed servers were placed at over 25-customer service offices worldwide, with a central server located in Hong Kong. This approach, called a hub-and-spoke model, allowed exporters to use GTR to submit official and legal trade documents at the local customer service branches, where they are scanned and routed to a centralized hub location for processing. At the central hub in Hong Kong, the FileNet workflow engine delivered documents (e.g., bill of lading) and data to skilled trade service representatives where they were examined for compliance with the Letter of Credit specifications and regulatory trade laws. Using GTR, Trade Service Representatives are able to process trade transactions more efficiently and accurately, track missing documents/items, perform online calculations, and follow up on payment and collection activities.

Since communication between the branch and central offices is electronic, the bank’s local Relationship Managers are able to provide customers with immediate answers to questions or document disputes, and knowledge of local trade laws/regulations. Customers are also given remote document entry and inquiry capabilities. This approach empowered the local branch to build a stronger and long-term relationship with their corporate customers and improve customer loyalty.