Bank of Africa selects Conpend TRADE AI app to digitise trade processes

FinTech solutions provider Finastra, has announced Bank of Africa, a pan-African financial group, has selected Conpend’s TRADE AI app from its open innovation platform, FusionFabric.cloud. The app extends the functionality of Finastra’s Fusion Trade Innovation technology and enables users to reduce document and compliance checking time. In addition, it digitises trade finance processes, using optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP) and progressive machine learning to reduce the risk and cost of trade finance operations.

Leila Bahoum, Board member in charge of Trade Finance Operations, OGS Subsidiary, Bank of Africa, said: “The solution will improve our trade finance operations by speeding up the approval of trade finance documents. We expect it will digitise manual, paper-based processes, reduce processing time by 30% and reduce trade finance risk levels by up to 80%. Having access to third-party apps was a clear differentiator when looking at trade finance solutions.”

Conpend TRADE AI extracts unstructured data from scanned paper documents and can also process already digitised data. The data is then screened and analysed, using rules and advanced analytics, to empower business users to make informed business decisions quickly and accurately.

Marc Smith, Founder and Director, Conpend said: “We’re so pleased that Bank of Africa has chosen to plug our innovative technology into its systems. This is one of the big benefits of us making our app available on Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud. We’ve been able to build our solution out quickly on the platform and make it available to banks around the world in support of Finastra’s vision of openness and collaboration.”

Anastasia McAlpine, Principal Product Manager, Trade and Supply Chain Finance, Finastra added that: “This is another great example of banks and FinTechs collaborating to bring innovative technology to market fast. We are confident Bank of Africa will realise great results with the Conpend Trade AI app and look forward to other banks tapping into this opportunity to further enhance the functionality of our Fusion Trade Innovation.”