Bolero’s focus is speed to delivery of value. Because Bolero is a fully compliant “out of the box” solution, most customers are able to get up and running and transacting live literally within days of enrolling in the Bolero service. Unlike most “multi-bank” trade finance solutions, the Bolero Multi-Bank service is proven for live operation with a large number of corporates, commodity traders and banks across Export LCs, Import LCs and Guarantees (applications and beneficiary-side).

In addition to being proven, and fully available, a number of characteristics of the Bolero service are targeted at enabling customers to go live within as short a time as practical. These include:

• Full end-to-end solution incorporating both trade finance application, corporate-bank-corporate electronic communication channel and bank interconnectivity
• Supports full range of application (solution) options for corporate and commodity trader customers (Bolero web applications, fully integrated 3rd party applications, Bolero enablement of existing customer applications).
• Range of interoperability options for each bank (fully embedded Bolero connector, Bolero WebGateway, Bolero 4Banks), enabling immediate live use and progression to full straight through processing (STP) in line with bank priorities, volumes and geographies.
• Unique Bolero electronic messaging channel (Bolero Open4Trade) providing out of the box electronic communication between corporates, commodity traders and their banks globally, eliminating the need to build expensive customer-specific integration and one-off processes, or to build complex message validation and management middleware to handle other electronic message “work-arounds”.
• Proven message and document standards for all trade finance flows (single message for each flow), with direct mapping into existing regional and community standards (e.g. German DTA standard, SWIFT MT7xx bank message standards).
• Hosted Bolero web-applications (Bolero 4Business), requiring no infrastructure (hardware or software) investment, and user based configuration to meet specific user requirements (e.g. authorizations and approvals, user dashboard configuration, reporting etc.)
• SAS 70 Type II compliant 24*7 365 hosted environment with full disaster-recovery
• Customer Services and Support roadmaps to guide implementation process
• Web-delivered and on-site customer training
• Bolero support for Corporate-Bank processes and message testing
• Bolero engagement in on-boarding of partner banks not already on the Bolero service

Rollout and on-boarding of Banks and other Financial Institutions

Bolero acts as a partner in the (global) roll-out of the Bolero multi-bank service as well as in recruiting, enrolling and on-boarding banks new to Bolero.

Although an increasing number of Banks are already live on the Bolero multi-bank service, it is not unusual for a corporate to identify a number of target banks which are not yet enrolled in the Bolero service. In addition, even if the Bank does already provide a Bolero service, it may be the case that the specific branch or geographic location of this bank does not yet have practical experience communicating with their corporate clients over Bolero.

Bolero takes an active role in partnering with its corporate and commodity trader clients to ensure timely adoption of Bolero and effective on-boarding and training of the appropriate bank location and resources.

Bolero has substantial experience in brokering an effective relationship between the corporate and the correct authority and resources in each bank, often benefiting from coordination with other members of the Bolero community to ensure clear benefits accrue to all parties.

Partnering with Banks and other Financial Institutions

As banks appreciate the realities of multi-bank trade finance and the substantial growth of demand globally, many are taking a more proactive approach to the provision of these services including:

• Standardisation on Bolero as their single multi-bank channel
• Proactive promotion of Bolero to their customers in an attempt to gain competitive position within strategic corporate or commodity trader customers
• Proactive promotion of Bolero to help drive convergence on a single multi-bank channel within a given region or globally
• Delivery of Bolero web applications (Bolero 4Business) as a “white label” trade finance solution to underpin additional value added bank services and with a route to multi-bank use

In these circumstances Bolero similarly partners with the financial institution to assist in the promotion, delivery of value and on-boarding of corporate clients.