Reply To: How will innovations in technology—particularly blockchain—affect trade financing in the years to come? How does this affect current practices in trade finance?

There are many moving parts in the cross-border trade ecosystem, and a great deal of paperwork is exchanged at each stage. If financial institutions do not abandon their time-consuming and error-prone methods of handling trade finance, they will continue to face an ever-increasing number of problems, including but not limited to: process inefficiencies; higher costs; longer wait times for credit analysis; data privacy worries; and, worst of all, a never-ending vulnerability to fraud. Although fraud in trade finance is not uncommon, the enormous losses it causes are.