The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has launched guidelines for the update of bank-to-corporate contractual agreements to include the bank payment obligation (BPO).

The document provides a suggested list of categories that should be considered when drafting a customer contract, though the ICC insists on the fact that the drafting of any agreement should remain within the control of the concerned bank.

André Casterman, global head of corporate and supply chain markets at Swift, tells GTR: What we heard from the market since the launch of the BPO two years ago is that many smaller banks were looking for guidance to upgrade their corporate-to-bank contractual documentation to include these new services. The [existing] BPO rules cover the bank-to-bank space, and not the corporate-to-bank space.

“The document, which we worked on over the last nine months or so, is providing that kind of guidance: what kind of clauses they should add into their contracts, how to insert particular BPO-based services (risk mitigation, financing, etc), aspects they need to consider, etc. We are hoping that this will accelerate the bank readiness to the BPO.”

The new guidelines are available on the ICC website.