ICC Digital Library Forum

No matter how long, or short, a mathematical calculation is on an invoice, or any other document for that matter, are bank's responsible to veryify their accuracy? According to article 15 of ICC500 "banks assume no liability or responsiblity for the form, sufficiency, accuracy...of any document...". Also article 13a states "banks must examine all documents ...to ascertain whether or not they appear, ON THEIR FACE, to be in compliance with the terms and conditions of the credit.". Another article 37b states "...banks may refuse commercial invoices issued for amounts in excess of the amount permitted by the credit." which refers to the total amounts, not detailed amounts.
ISBP also comments on this in item 68 "detailed mathematical calculations in invoices will not be checked by banks. Banks are only obliged to check TOTAL VALUES against the credit and/or other documents".
Despite, what I believe, it being very clear that we (banks) are not to involve ourselves in verifying whether the mathematical calculations on documents are correct (or not), many banks still do and end up calling such discrepancies even though there is no ICC article to back this "discrepancy".
Of course, there is a discrepancy fee to accompany this unfounded discrepancy.
Comments from fellow DCPRO users are welcomed. Do you cite incorrect mathematical calculations as discrepancies?

No, for the reasons you have outlined, reinforced by the judgement of the English courts in the recent case of CREDIT INDUSTRIEL ET COMMERCIAL v CHINA MERCHANTS BANK ( IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEENS BENCH DIVISION COMMERCIAL COURT Neutral citation number: [2002] EWHC 973 (Comm)). If you want a copy of the judgement try www.bailii.com.

Thank you Jeremy for your reply and I shall most definitely take a look at the site you refer to.

What constitutes a "detailed mathematical calculation" ? Since the answer must be subjective, there is no clear cut solution to this problem. One can only rely on a common sense approach.

Laurence

simonj,

You have used three adjectives to describe a mathematical calculation: long, short and detailed. ISBP has referred to the detailed calculations only.

According to R.40 of ICC Pub. No. 371 “banks were not obliged to check individual calculations made by the beneficiary and shown in the commercial invoice, but that banks might possibly be held liable by the courts if they negligently failed to notice obvious errors on the face of the commercial invoice”. An example of such individual calculation is given as multiplication of quantity (weight, number of packing units, individual items) with the unit price.

Based on the above, I do not think you could make a general statement here.

Dimitri