Trade Ledger, the world’s first open banking business lending platform has launched a new turn-key Automated Invoice Finance Platform for banks and alternative finance providers looking to deliver faster and more flexible working capital solutions to their business customers. Launched to coincide with the commercial finance sector’s key event, the NACFB Expo, the solution is designed to help financial institutions adopt state-of-the-art technology without having to make major infrastructure changes or commit significant IT investment.

The new cloud-based platform, which can be delivered in as little as eight weeks, is the first in a range of preconfigured lending solutions delivered ‘as-a-Service’ as part of Trade Ledger’s global enterprise technology, focused on driving digital transformation for incumbent commercial banks and specialist business lenders. Trade Ledger already has agreements in place for the platform to transform the lending operations of commercial finance providers in Australia, Europe and Asia, and it expects further growth in these regions throughout 2019.

Commenting on the new solution, Martin McCann, CEO at Trade Ledger said: “Lenders in the invoice finance sector must start paying more attention to the advancements in the provision of cheaper, faster and more intelligent business finance solutions. New tech-driven entrants like Market Invoice, Iwoca and OakNorth are challenging the incumbents’ stranglehold on this market. As a specialist B2B technology company, Trade Ledger can provide the same capabilities ‘as-a-Service’ to lenders looking to transform their credit operations and super-charge their ability to compete.”

Trade Ledger provides the most modern API-based LaaS (Lending-as-a-Service) platform and the only one built specifically for the new world of Open Banking. The technology reduces origination costs by as much as 60%, increases return on customer acquisition campaigns by over 100%, and enables lenders to access new market segments that current clunky products prevent access to. Unlike many platforms aimed solely at ‘auto-decisioning’ for micro businesses, Trade Ledger specialises in what it calls ‘auto-assisted decisioning’ which augments the traditional relationship-based credit process with new digital data, advanced workflow approvals, centralised messaging, role-based task management; integrated document management.

The platform is highly secure having attained ISO27001 cloud security compliance, and critically is the only option in the market globally that supports every type of secured and unsecured lending product. Lending products supported include commercial loans, unsecured loans, receivables finance, supply chain finance, asset finance, import/export finance, inventory finance, supply chain finance, reverse factoring and trade finance. It is fully interoperable with any other modern third-party service providers and comes pre-integrated with a range of other API enabled platforms like accounting packages (Xero, Sage, Intuit), Microsoft Dynamics365, DocuSign & Equifax. Most recently, the platform has also integrated with transactional trade credit insurer, Nimbla.

Trade Ledger uses open APIs, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to enhance or replace old and costly legacy systems, to provide new cutting-edge working capital solutions to business customers. The new Automated Invoice Finance Platform offers end-to-end loan origination capabilities and is fully white-labelled to provide the infrastructure and automation capabilities for:

• Lead Generation
• Digital Application
• Due Diligence & Onboarding
• Credit Risk Decisioning
• Settlement
• Loan Management
• Reconciliation

According to EY’s most recent report – ‘The Future of SME Banking’ 1 , demand for UK SME credit reached £59 billion in 2018 and businesses can spend more 30 hours of work and lenders take over 90 days to onboard 1 new customer for 1 credit product. Leveraging its new platform, Trade Ledger can cut the application time down to as little as 4-minutes, removing lengthy and manual paper-based underwriting processes; bridging the gap in customer and staff digital experience; and improving the suitability of lending products and pricing.

Martin McCann, CEO at Trade Ledger added: “We approach the automation of traditional products like invoice finance by applying our inherent understanding of the supply-chain. The team has taken our decades of experience in the global enterprise technology sector and focused on creating the world’s most advanced data-driven lending platform.”