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APAC growth helps UK Fintech firm revolutionise trade digitisation

Country: Hong Kong

A British fintech firm is leading the digitisation of global trade thanks to outstanding relationships in APAC.

Headquartered in Surrey, England, Bolero has built a strong reputation and market leadership position in driving the digitisation of global trade. Its pioneering solutions have revolutionised the way businesses carry out Iiternational trade by removing many of the delays, issues and risks associated with cumbersome paper-based processes.

Bolero, which has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, has grown its operations in APAC to account for more than half of its total turnover since it established a presence in the region 14 years ago. With an impressive client list which includes many leading corporates, banks, carriers and shippers in the region, Bolero is helping organisations right across the global supply chain to take advantage of the benefits of trade digitisation.

This includes for example HSBC, who are using Bolero’s supply chain financing solution to reduce the cost of invoice and purchase order processing between HSBC business customers and their suppliers. Two of the region’s carriers, Evergreen and Wan Hai are also using Bolero’s technology to deliver electronic Bills of Laing (eBL) which will significantly reduce the time to complete transactions from days to hours.

This ongoing success has enabled the firm to grow its revenue by an impressive 19% in 2018 – a year in which it was at the centre of an important first in the practical application of blockchain technology to the digitisation of trade finance. This involved a blockchain-enabled Letter of Credit (LC) transaction slashing the amount of time when compared with conventional paper-based processes.

Chief executive Andrew Raymond said: “Bolero’s early success was driven by our relationship with the Chinese steel industry and our ability to present important transactional documents both electronically and securely. Our activity in APAC has grown significantly since then and major businesses are using our technology in sectors as diverse as financial services and shipping.”

“Historically, trade finance has been woefully under-digitised, and our solutions are another great example of how the UK is bringing innovation to life. We see our relationship with DIT as a key enabler for us to further shape the industry encouraging collaboration and interoperability to improve global transaction standards. DIT’s role in brokering introductions to new partners has already benefitted our business to fulfil our mission to make trade safer, smarter and faster, delivering major efficiency gains for all our banking, corporate and supply chain customers.”

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