DC Insight

No, your eyes are not deceiving you; we've had a facelift. After 13 years of DCInsight, we were convinced it was time to refresh the publication with a new colour, new typeface and a more vigorous format. We hope our readers will be pleased with the new look and look forward to your comments. But a facelift does not mean we're forsaking our core content. It will remain - as it has been since 1995 - the most cogent commentary we can offer on the latest developments in trade finance.

Of course, with UCP 600 only six months old, we'll continue to publish reactions to the new rules. In this issue, four experts assess 600 from their own perspective as bankers and traders. If there's a common theme in these articles, it's attempts by some banks to exclude in their credits certain articles of the new UCP. At first glance, this would seem to signal some problem with the rules. But it's well to recall that the same occurred when UCP 500 appeared. Clearly, all new rules take time to get accustomed to, and exclusions are likely to fade as practitioners dig deeper into the articles. One of our writers, Radek Dobáš puts it succinctly: "A major concern for one banker may represent a major improvement for another."

But this issue contains more than UCP 600. In "Expert commentary", Michael Quinn and William Cameron invite us to react to the new world of trade - in other words (dare we say it?) to look beyond L/Cs to new solutions that take into account the entire supply chain: in Cameron's words "a banker's solution to a client's problem" rather than "a banker's solution to a banker's problem".

Here is content aimed at the present and the future: not a bad mix for a renewed DCInsight.