MONTRÉAL, Oct. 21 2018
/PRNewswire/ - CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) announced the
successful collaboration with National Bank of Canada and Skuchain on a pilot program that
will improve and streamline the process for negotiating standby
letters of credit and guarantees, the complex conditional
agreements used by banks for securing financial transactions. These
agreements, used across many industries to secure contracts, are
currently conducted via email, making them prone to errors and
delays in a process that lacks transparency for beneficiaries
regarding terms and approval status.
For National Bank of Canada,
CGI integrated the CGI Trade360 trade finance platform with
Skuchain's Contract Builder, an application built on the blockchain
startup's Brackets platform for smart contracts on a blockchain.
The integration enables National Bank of Canada to provide trade finance services
digitally to customers conducting business on a blockchain B2B
solution. In particular, customers will be able to initiate,
conduct and conclude negotiations of standby letters of credit and
guarantees entirely on smart contracts that can intelligently
construct agreements and securely communicate any changes in terms
to relevant parties. The result is a blockchain-based contract
negotiation tool that is enormously effective in the standby letter
of credit and guarantee process.
National Bank of Canada's
end-to-end, blockchain-enabled process will improve processing
times, reduce risks and help strengthen the bank's customer
relationships. By leveraging templates pre-approved by banks and
negotiations on a distributed ledger, the integrated platform
automates the coordination necessary to issue a standby letter of
credit or guarantee. The newly streamlined process offers
visibility across the lifecycle, lower costs for all parties,
increased security and more effective collaboration.
"This pilot project is a great opportunity to leverage
blockchain technology to simplify the process for negotiating
standby letters of credit and guarantees while making it more
transparent and secure. This will enable us to offer a simple, fast
and efficient experience to our commercial clients which
facilitates managing their business," said Patrice Roy, Vice President, Payments, Cash
Management and International Solutions at National Bank of
Canada.
"This standby letter of credit contract builder is the first
live implementation of the emerging DLPC standard" said
Srinivasan Sriram, CEO at Skuchain.
"This standard is the result of more than two years of work by the
Distributed Ledger Payment Commitment (DLPC) Working Group at the
Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT) which our VP of
Technology Ranganathan Krishnan has been captaining."
"The use of blockchain offers a shared ledger that serves as the
single source of truth during pre-issuance negotiation and through
issuance and re-issuance processes," said Frank Tezzi, Vice-President of Trade and Supply
Chain Solutions at CGI. "This example provides certainty and
transparency for beneficiaries regarding the guarantee process as
they enter into a financial transaction."
About Skuchain
Skuchain is a blockchain technology
company that provides transparency, security and efficiency to the
supply chain. In the same way the Internet gave birth to
e-commerce, blockchain provides the foundation for collaborative
commerce, in which enterprises are uniquely able to work together
to unlock gains while also expanding their control across the
global value chain. Based on this vision, Skuchain's Empowered
Collaborative Commerce Cloud (EC3) Platform has been adopted across
aerospace, food and agriculture, electronics, energy, auto, finance
and other industries in East Asia,
Europe, the US and Africa. Learn more at www.skuchain.com.
About CGI
Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest
independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world.
With 74,000 professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an
end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from IT and business
consulting to systems integration, outsourcing services and
intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a
local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network
that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and
accelerate results. With annual revenue of C$10.8 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX
(GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com.
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SOURCE CGI Group Inc.