Standard Chartered and IBM launch AI platform for trade documentation

Standard Chartered has launched the Trade AI Engine, a joint solution developed in partnership with IBM to enhance the client experience in trade document processing through increased operational efficiency and strengthened operational control. The solution is currently live in key markets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, with more markets across the Bank’s footprint to follow.

Traditional documentary trade requires millions of data elements in paper-based, unstructured documents – often issued by various companies – to be reviewed through a largely manual process. With the implementation of the Trade AI Engine powered by IBM, this process is now significantly automated:

• Conversion of non-digital shipping documents into machine-readable format enabled by Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
• Identification and classification of document types from an initial pre-defined database.
• Continuous Machine learning (ML) based on user re-classification/re-defining of data elements to further improve accuracy.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to read and capture context from data in the documents.

The solution allows the bank to handle high volumes of diverse back office tasks with greater efficiency and accuracy, thus offering a more seamless trade processing experience for clients.