Emirates Islamic has launched a fully integrated sharia compliant online trade finance and supply chain platform.

The Dubai-based bank hopes the new platform, EI Trade, will boost its trade finance business volumes significantly.

Benefits

EI Trade offers corporate and business customers an electronic platform to initiate trade finance transactions, including letter of credit (L/C) issuance and amendments, on a secured system available 24/7.

The new platform enables the financing aspects of trade transactions to be accomplished electronically, which the bank says will make the process more efficient compared with paper-based transactions.

Organisations using EI Trade can customise the portal to their specific requirements by creating personalised dashboards, tracking requests, generating reports and enabling notifications for completed transactions via email and text messaging.

Projected growth

"Trade finance is the biggest component of our business," according to Emirate Islamic's CEO, Jamal Bin Ghalaita.

"We are confident that this solution will provide a major thrust for Islamic trade finance activities in the UAE, and thus contribute to Dubai's plan of becoming the global capital of the Islamic economy," he added.

The bank expects to post double-digit growth in financing this year and the year ahead. For 2016, the bank expects 11 per cent growth in financing driven by trade finance and financing of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

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