Hong Kong Ocean Terminal
Ocean Terminals are the nexus point between export and import processes for cross border trade within most nations. Due to their position in the supply chain, ocean terminals have milestone and event data about the movement of goods in and out of a country and maintain important data relationships with the carriers, forwarders, traders, and customs.
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eCOM have partnered with OnePort in Hong Kong to leverage this trade data as the basis for facilitating trade finance. OnePort is a joint venture between the majority of ocean terminal operators in Hong Kong and provides “Smart Port” solutions to its owners and a community of over 13,000 organisations that utilise their services.
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The initial focus of the partnership is to add governance to the data utilised by the “Smart Port” solutions which in turn identifies data ownership and adds data trust. This was achieved by integrating the “Smart Port” applications with the eCOM Registry using its standardised APIs.
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“Our Smart Port solutions facilitate the exchange of data in parallel with the physical movement of goods in and out of the Terminals, but the data access is limited to the service users. We want to take this “dead” data and make it “alive” so all port community members can benefit. By leveraging the eCOM Registry, we can provide secure access to validated and trusted data while maintaining control and ownership at all times for those who own their data”, said Philip Ho, CEO of OnePort.
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To date, the eCOM Registry has over 15M trusted trade documents, from over 20,000 organisations available on the network.
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The next phase of the partnership is leveraging the trusted data to offer Trade Finance to the ocean terminal community which consists of trucking companies, importers, exporters, and freight forwarders. Though Hong Kong is a developed nation and a global leader in financial services, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) surveyed over 120 Banks in early 2020 of which 70% of the respondents expressed that global trade finance needs are not adequately addressed. This is consistent with the published findings of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that the global trade finance gap experienced my mid-market and SME companies in 2019 was US$1.5 Trillion.
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Using historical and behavioural data from OnePort and other data sources has allowed the eCOM Registry to provide statistical and analytical data to Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) who can use this redacted information to preapprove financing for the ocean terminal community participants. Preapproved organisations can then share additional trusted data they own through the eCOM Registry with the FSIs for them to complete the final validations and issue funds.
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This process has been proven with the 1st FSI, Velotrade, a trade finance platform which has credit-line approved USD 120m in revolving loan and invoice/AR financing (as of June 2022).
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Once an organisation is enjoying funding, the eCOM Registry continues to monitor their business performance using the trusted real-time transactional data available from the OnePort “Smart Port” solutions and other trusted data sources.
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eCOM now plan to replicate this proven data and financing model to other markets including Australia, Singapore, Philippines and China, then ultimately to the whole of the Asia Pacific.