Innovative letter of credit (L/C) business has helped several banks to win awards in Global Finance magazine's latest list of the world's best trade finance providers.

The winners of the Worlds' Best Trade Finance Providers 2022 Awards are those banks and providers that best serve the specialised needs of corporations as they engage in cross-border trade.

BNP Paribas

In handing BNP Paribas the year's best trade finance provider bank award, the judges noted recent innovations including Connexis LC Export, which offers a full digital overview of the lifecycle status of export L/Cs and Connexis Guarantees, which enhances the issuance and reporting capabilities of business guarantees.

Optical character recognition combined with machine learning and natural language processing technologies meanwhile are being deployed by BNP Paribas to digitise paper documents and automatically extract data.

Standard Chartered

Standard Chartered Hong Kong won the best trade document management award. The judges noted that the bank issued the world's first renminbi-denominated blockchain L/C on the Contour blockchain-based trade platform.

They also recognised that the bank was subsequently chosen by a leading steel manufacturer to provide the first back-to-back L/C structure and electronic document presentation with essDOCS combination, also on Contour.

Sberbank

The best use of artificial intelligence (AI) in trade finance award went to Sberbank. The judges said the Russian bank's AI strategy continues to streamline laborious processes and bring benefits to clients.

The bank won this award for creating an online evaluation system that recommends the best trade finance offers to clients. If the system finds that a client and counterparty need an L/C, the client is instantly invited to fill out the form.

More details on the winners of the Global Finance Worlds' Best Trade Finance Providers 2022 Awards can be found here.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.