The Chairman of the International Trade & Forfaiting Association (ITFA) Fintech Committee, André Casterman, has published a brief report on DLT in action. In the report, Casterman explains how the association’s dDOC specifications can help banks digitise their financial instruments, such as guarantees and bills of exchange.
In the publication, Casterman goes into how far the DNI Initiative has come since its launch in Q3 of 2019. He states,
The technology requirements – referred to as the dDOC specifications – describe how to leverage advanced document technology to produce, manage and share digital original documents, i.e., digitally native originals that are portable amongst financial institutions, their correspondent banks, their clients and any third-party platform they wish to use for value-added processing (e.g., bill of lading platform).
Strategic partnership with Enigio
At the beginning of the initiative, ITFA had to look for a strategic partner to provide the technical requirements to support the process. They found one in us, where they identified our trace:original product as the ideal solution that helps trace and secure original documents ownership. Casterman noted that possession and transfer ownership was a key requirement for digital originals to be used to support negotiable instruments.
The CEO of Enigio, Göran Almgren, agrees that blockchain has helped implement the dDoc specifications. He states,
DLT in action – Enigio uses blockchain technology only where it is needed, as proof of the truth and not to store business data.
Benefits of digital originals to financial institutions
Since financial institutions are often regarded as ‘trusted islands of document exchange,’ digital original documents have helped these platforms. Digital originals are freely transferrable means that they are fully portable across various financial institutions, which has helped with interoperability across the platforms. Enigio is proud that our trace:original is the first tech partner that complies with ITFA’s dDoc specifications to allow the exchange of documents by financial institutions and other trade platforms.
Göran added,
We are confident that our DLT-based trace:original solution provides the most effective upgrade path from physical documents to digital originals, as our technology not only mimics today’s physical document flows but also offers the highest levels of security, integrity and traceability.