Rabobank signs with Bolero to provide multi-bank Trade Finance service

The Bolero multi-bank service enables the automation of the end-to-end lifecycle of the Letter of Credit and Guarantee instruments for both Importers and Exporters over a highly secure neutral and standardised channel. A significant number of Corporates and Banks are utilising the Bolero service which has increasingly been adopted as the standard channel for multi-bank trade finance.

Diane Boogaard, Global Head of Trade and Commodity Finance at Rabobank says: “Rabobank has been interested in the Bolero service for some considerable time. We now have a growing list of customers who already use the channel or have indicated they plan to use Bolero in the near future. As a result we are delighted that we are now able to join this community and utilise this service bringing benefits to our customers as well as to Rabobank.”

“We have built an excellent relationship with Rabobank who clearly understand the needs of their corporate customers as well as appreciating the benefits to themselves in providing a neutral multi-bank trade finance service.” said Claire Buchanan, SVP, Global Field Operations at Bolero. “Rabobank has a strong global presence particularly in the provision of trade finance in Commodities where we have seen a rapid increase in the use of the Bolero multi-bank service.”

“We are delighted to be partnering with Rabobank”, said Arthur Vonchek, CEO of Bolero. “Rabobank are a high profile bank that has a great reputation in trade finance and we have been eager to find the opportunity to start working with them and their customers. We expect this agreement will form the basis of a close partnership and increased cooperation in the future”

Bolero provides a unique electronic multi-banking channel solution for corporate customers, while at the same time providing a single multi-corporate electronic channel for each bank. Bolero prevents both communities from needing to support multiple bank and/or corporate specific processes, interfaces and data formats, clearly driving standardisation in this space. In addition Bolero provides comprehensive “On-Demand” Trade Finance applications enabling speedy adoption and flexible use.

“In the current climate corporate customers are more critical towards counterpart risk than in recent times.” said Diane Boogaard. “There has been a corresponding increase in the use of traditional trade instruments. What is clear to us is that this presents a great opportunity for banks to engage further with their customers in the provision of such traditional trade services. At the same time we believe it is critical that banks deploy solutions which truly meet the needs of their corporates rather than simply returning to some of the inefficiencies associated with traditional processing in the past. The use of Bolero in conjunction with our existing trade finance solutions ensures that Rabobank is ideally placed to satisfy these goals.”

About Rabobank Group
Rabobank Group is an international financial services provider operating on the basis of cooperative principles. It offers retail banking, wholesale banking, asset management, leasing, real estate and insurance services. Strategic focus is on achieving market leadership as an all-finance bank in the Netherlands and on building on the bank’s leading position as a food & agri bank internationally. Rabobank Group is comprised of independent local Rabobanks plus Rabobank Nederland, their central organisation, as well as a number of subsidiaries and associates, including a 39% equity interest in Eureko, an insurance company. The organisation, which has about 60,000 employees, operates in 46 countries.
Rabobank Group has the highest credit rating, Triple A, awarded by the well-known international rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s. In terms of Tier I capital, Rabobank Group is among the world’s twenty largest financial institutions.
The Trade & Commodity Finance (TCF) business unit brings together Rabobank’s long term expertise in agricultural commodities, export finance as well as energy and metals finance. TCF’s aim is to be a one-stop trade flow solution provider. Rabobank offers in depth product knowledge, embedded in a global branch network and professional support for all international trade transactions. Rabobank identifies financial product needs along the supply chain, working with the client to maximize flow efficiencies and minimize financial and operational risks.
www.rabobank.com

About Bolero
Bolero was created as a neutral, trusted third party to develop a comprehensive set of standards that would remove the barriers to global, cross-enterprise business. Bolero implements and enforces these standards in an open platform to enable paperless trading between buyers, sellers, logistics, banks, agencies and regulatory authorities anywhere in the world, delivering transaction visibility, predictability, speed, accuracy and security.
Building on this platform, Bolero delivers applications that enable the merging of the Physical and Financial Supply Chains, allowing companies to fundamentally re-engineer the way that business is done and take advantage of electronic trading. Customers and their trade partners are rapidly deploying Bolero solutions delivering significant reductions in cost and working capital, increased visibility and improvements in operating efficiency.
www.bolero.net