For Bolero to provide the common infrastructure in support of Multi-Bank Trade Finance, it is imperative that the service is entirely open, bypassing any discussion about which formats will become the dominant standards in the future. Indeed such debate about which will become the “standard” for the future generally serves to confuse the market, deliver little value and rarely results in a true global standard.

Bolero’s objective is clear – to allow convergence onto an open multi-bank channel to enable Corporate, Commodity Trader and Bank communities to have a single multi-bank, multi-customer channel to all counterparties.  

To achieve this in a practical way, such that all participants can quickly implement and drive value without expensive development, integration or ongoing maintenance, Bolero implements a number of imperatives:

1. Truly open electronic channel using the Internet and industry standard protocols (Bolero Open4Trade)
2. No requirement to install a proprietary transport channel like SWIFT
3. No software or hardware infrastructure requirement
4. The provision of rich fit-for-purpose message and document formats in support of all Trade Finance end-to-end process and document flows (Collaboration Libraries and BoleroXML)
5. Mapping to local or proprietary message formats (e.g. German DTA standards)

In addition, Bolero ensures choice and flexibility for Corporate and Commodity Trader customers in the selection of Trade Finance management applications.

Although Bolero provides a comprehensive range of Trade Finance functionality in its web applications (Bolero 4Business) which the majority of Bolero customers use, these are not a pre-requisite for the use of the Bolero multi-bank channel.

Bolero enables a range of solution options for corporate clients:

1. Web-hosted multi-bank solutions delivered as a Service – built by Bolero as a complementary offering to the Bolero infrastructure. These Bolero “on-demand” solutions (Bolero 4Business), support the full breadth of trade finance requirements from Export LC, Import LC, Applicant and Beneficiary side Guarantees, Sureties, Standbys and Bonds, and Documentary Collections as well as ePresentations.
2. Bolero-enablement of traditional on-premise and other 3rd party industry-specific multi-bank trade finance solutions (for example. COR-TF from Surecomp).
3. Bolero-enablement of customer specific solutions or customer-specific ERP extensions.

Of course, whichever application is used by the corporate or commodity trader, the bank is completely insulated from this through the use of the Bolero multi-bank channel (Bolero Open4Trade).