TradeSun and Stanbic Bank Kenya have teamed up to host a virtual roundtable on how digital banking can reduce regulatory hurdles and advance compliance in trade.

Regulatory demands, costs and risks are weighing on players in trade. While there remains uncertainty in the industry because of the Covid-19 pandemic, one thing that is clear is the need to ramp up digitization efforts, particularly in compliance, and partnerships between banks and technology companies.

“When you look at the pandemic and the ensuing challenges it brought forth, these had a significant impact not only on supply chains but it also brought to fore the lingering issue of the slow pace of automation in trade finance,” said Josephine Mwangi, Trade Product and Sales Manager at Stanbic Bank Kenya, during the roundtable today.

“Technology has a huge role to play because it can bring consistency, extended coverage, and affordability to the process of financial crime prevention. As businesses grow, scalability, consistency of applying due diligence, and making sure the coverage is 100% and not risk-based are key requirements technology can help address,” said Manoj Saxena, Chief Product Officer at TradeSun.

Topics discussed in the session include how leveraging data and artificial intelligence is crucial in reducing risk and advancing compliance – as well as the need for universal data standards in trade finance.

Other speakers on the panel were Anne Mureithi, Stanbic’s Acting Head of Compliance, and Andy Hindley, Chief Operating Officer at TradeSun.

The event forms part of an ongoing partnership between Stanbic and TradeSun. Earlier this year, the bank went into live production with TradeSun’s solution that facilitates the automation of trade document examination.