Standard Chartered to pilot DLT-based smart guarantees in trade finance

With a view to transform the traditionally paper intensive Bank Guarantees business, this is the first blockchain client pilot that fully digitises the process, from initiation of the bank guarantee to the claim handling, according to the UK-based bank.

Unlike a letter of credit, which involves multiple parties, performance details and over 100 pages of documents, a commercial bank guarantee is a much simpler instrument to digitise. This solution will enable Siemens to digitise its guarantee process for customers with large transaction volumes in the future, spanning issuance, amendments and claims, eliminating the multiple touch-points and inefficiencies, which are inherent in the paper intensive process today.

The pilot started in March 2018 and will be fully completed later this year. The proposition is based on auto-executing smart contracts, leveraging the Corda Distributed Ledger and application layer provided by TradeIX.