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Danske Bank has become the first lender to select software provider TradeWiz to implement an end-to-end trade finance operations platform.

TradeWiz’s Tr8Star platform will replace Danske’s in-house systems and cover all client-facing and back-end elements of its trade finance offering, the Danish lender says, as it tries to position itself as a “pioneering” Nordic bank in trade.

“By integrating TradeWiz’s digital trade finance engine, we’re essentially paving the way to redesign our trade finance ecosystem in a vast number of areas, with the intent both to add capacity and free up time for important customer advisory – and we can make progress much faster and efficiently than would otherwise be possible,” Danske’s global head of trade finance Jukka Kuusala tells GTR.

Danske says it will implement Tr8Star incrementally and notify customers when new capabilities are available.

TradeWiz, headquartered in the Netherlands, is aiming to compete with established providers of trade finance technology to banks, such as Surecomp and China Systems.

“We could not be more proud and excited about having been selected by Danske Bank to be our inaugural bank customer implementing our Tr8Star platform as the core engine for their trade operations requirements,” says Jacco de Jong, TradeWiz’s co-owner and commercial director. De Jong recently returned to the company after leaving digital trade provider Bolero.

“We always felt there was a need for a sensible alternative in the area of end-to-end trade operations software,” de Jong adds.

Danske chose TradeWiz from a shortlist of vendors, says the bank’s product owner for the platform, Erik Punt. “They are not the biggest but extremely efficient and motivated,” he says, adding the bank was also impressed by the platform’s modular software and “unparalleled” capabilities.

The bank wanted a trade finance operations process that can easily adapt to the widespread adoption of third-party platforms and digitisation of what are still largely paper-based trade documents, according to Danske’s product owner for the platform, Erik Punt.

Experts argue there will need to be widespread interoperability between providers of trade finance software, digital documents, and other platforms for trade finance digitisation to be effective.

“Danske Bank knows that APIs are the future, with dominant third-party platforms playing a role in the corporate and corporate-to-bank space,” Punt says. “To be competitive, we must future-proof ourselves and be capable of integrating with corporate customers and their platforms directly through standardised APIs.”