National Bank of Pakistan taps Finastra for trade finance solution
The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has tapped Finastra to power its trade finance operations, enabling NBP to lower transaction costs for its corporate customers.
Finastra says its end-to-end working capital solution, Fusion Trade Innovation, allows for “frictionless” trade and supply chain finance, including buyer and seller loans, letters of credit, collections, guarantees, and government support for export credit and SME loans.
NBP senior executive vice president and group chief of operations, Imran Farooqui, says: “Fusion Trade Innovation will give us the tools we need to modernise, future-proof and ultimately grow our business.”
Fusion Trade Innovation also comes packaged with a development toolkit that enables banks to develop new features themselves, while outsourcing the maintenance to Finastra.
Finastra managing director for the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions, Manish Joshi, says: “Increasing complexity, regulatory changes and cost of capital mean that efficient trade and supply chain finance management has never been more important.
“In this environment, banks that are constrained by legacy infrastructures, disjointed processes and fragmented transactional views will struggle to successfully grow their businesses.”
Finastra’s certified vendor in Pakistan, InfoTech, stewarded the deal and implemented the solution.
The firm’s vice president of its banking services business unit, Asim Haque, says the solution is able to automate NBP’s trade operations nationwide, which were previously managed manually.
“Integrating this with the core, treasury and Swift not only gives NBP 360-degree visibility of its trade transactions but has also managed to reduce operational costs,” Haque adds.