In our relentless pursuit to identify and share with our community some of the unique and compelling startup stories from the ecosystem, this week we spoke to Team Contour to understand more about their journey, their vision and the way forward. Let’s read their unique story!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with the Team:
Talk us through Contour and its vision. How does it work?
Contour is a global network of banks, corporates and ecosystem partners working together to transform trade finance. Our vision is to create a better and brighter future for businesses and communities by making global trade accessible, digital and secure.
By doing so, global trade has the potential to reduce poverty and inequality. One of the keys to making trade accessible is through transforming trade finance. Our goal is to build a new global standard by simplifying and removing barriers in the trade ecosystem, where everyone can collaborate on a common network.
What challenges are you trying to solve?
Traditional methods of trade finance are archaic and create significant barriers for global trade growth, adding complexity, cost, and delays to both banks and corporates. Trade finance does not have digital infrastructure to drive improvements or to remove the heavy requirement for paper documents that need to be couriered globally.
With no standard connectivity between banks and corporates for communication, several challenges occur – inefficiencies are rife, as well as a lack of clarity and poor interoperability between all participants.”
Additionally, the industry currently operates in silos without integrating into the main elements of trade such as contracting, post-trade fulfilment, customs and other areas.
This causes friction and unnecessary administration, which in turn, leads to increasing costs and delays. Unless the processes for global trade digitises, commercial activity will always struggle.
Who are your customers? What is the way forward?
Contour began life as some of the world’s leading trade banks joined together to test and validate next-generation technology using R3’s blockchain enterprise software. At the start of 2020, we launched as an independent organisation, retaining several key banks in the process, and have welcomed more financial institutions – both international and regional banks – as well as expanding our corporate customer base. We’re industry-agnostic, meaning that our corporate customers can range from steel to textiles and anywhere between from all over the world.
Our network is scalable and global. We can support a transaction within a country, or across continents. Global trade requires a shift in its ecosystem and we want to ensure that our offering is capable of supporting the varied methods of conducting trade.
How has Contour aimed to provide improved access for customers?
Aside from growing our customer base of banks and corporates, we have continued to partner with complementary networks to simplify automated data transfer for our customers. Through industry-wide collaboration, these partners integrate into Contour’s network and provide even greater efficiencies through digitising documents or streamlining processes.
Our aim is to ensure that banks and corporates have the freedom to choose how to conduct their transactions through our interoperable and growing digital trade network.
What are some of the key benefits of your network?
By transforming Letters of Credit (LC) – a key process in global trade which is among the most important instruments but one of the oldest and most archaic – companies will see significant cost and time-saving benefits over traditional paper-based processes.
During testing, Contour reduced the LC processing time by up to 90%, allowing companies to see huge efficiency gains. We’re also ensuring that this improvement in speed does not compromise security. Our decentralised network achieves this balance by allowing all users to collaborate and share information without one party – including Contour – owning the entire network or controlling the data.
Each group on the network will be able to keep their own data secure, while still being able to allow the seamless transition of information to present an LC. This digital solution not only is secure, but sustainable. Traditional trade uses trillions of pieces of paperwork and millions of courier legs which has a significant impact on the environment.”
Through using our network, we offer a cleaner, more efficient and sustainable option that allows companies to reduce their carbon footprint.
What should organisations conducting trade finance be considering as they move to a digital solution?
International trade needs to eradicate paper-based processes. Not only are they extremely outdated but they now pose a significant security risk. A digital solution is not a competitive advantage but should instead be the industry standard.
As an industry, we can fail alone or succeed together. The rising tide raises all boats, and through innovating as a collective, we can improve the process of trade finance.
What advice would you offer other start-ups in your industry?
The best piece of advice is to start-ups in an industry as big and complex as trade finance is to start small.
It’s easy to forget that when Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994, it was not the one-stop-shop that it is today. Amazon initially offered only books where they felt they could improve on a traditional shopping experience.”
This allowed it to establish itself in the market with limited scope, build user acceptance and perfect its processes before expanding. Trade finance start-ups should try a similar structure.
Due to its size and complex matrix of participants, geographies and regulations, attempting to digitise all of the international trade at once is a near-impossible task. However, choosing a single process where value can be created can provide a strong foundation from which other processes will follow.
That is why we have chosen to start with LCs, as it has remained largely unchanged for over 100 years, and it provides the perfect opportunity to show immediate value through process improvements and digitisation.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
