Finastra today announced a multi-year global agreement with Microsoft focused on trade platform modernization, building on the existing availability of Finastra Trade Innovation in the cloud. Delivering the full functionality of Trade Innovation via a full microservices architecture using Microsoft Azure, will give banks increased agility, flexibility and scalability, enabling them to continue to provide service excellence to customers throughout their modernization journey.

As the expectations of corporate customers evolve, financial institutions need to deliver a seamless and engaging transactional experience across their trade finance and supply chain finance operations in support of open finance. Further extending the open APIs available through Trade Innovation and Finastra’s open innovation platform, FusionFabric.cloud, will allow customers to leverage a vibrant digital trade ecosystem, supporting the digitalization of the full transaction lifecycle.

“Partnering with Microsoft builds on our joint strategic vision to help accelerate the digital transformation of financial services, and support customers on their journeys to be open,” said Isabel Fernandez, Executive Vice President for Lending at Finastra. “Customers are eager to transform their trade finance and supply chain offerings, and to access the latest innovations, working with partners across the ecosystem. Via this agreement, existing and new customers will benefit from increased flexibility to connect, collaborate and adapt to evolving customer needs and new regulations.”

Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft added: “We’re excited to deepen our relationship with Finastra to support banks on their trade modernization journey. Using the rich functionality of Finastra’s Trade Innovation platform and FusionFabric.cloud, combined with the power of Microsoft Azure and data and AI advancements, we look forward to helping financial institutions further accelerate innovation, increase efficiencies, enhance customer engagement and transform their operations at scale.”

Finastra Trade Innovation was recognized once again as “Best in Class” in the Aite Matrix of Trade Finance Software (Feb 2023) from Datos Insights (formerly Aite-Novarica Group). Enrico Camerinelli, Strategic Advisor at Datos Insights said: “The decline of manually intensive and paper trade finance operations, the continued growth of supply chain finance, and the rise of fintech players are encouraging banks to transform the status quo with API-based open banking, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. To achieve this, banks need modern, open systems and the support of industry leaders in this space, supporting them on their transformation journeys.”