Euro Exim Bank Ltd: A Renowned International Banking Financial Institution
Graham Bright: Head – Compliance & Operations
Financial Institutions play a pivotal role in managing the financial and monetary issues of corporates, businesses, individuals, etc. Regulating and monitoring the transactions, financial institutions are instrumental in shaping the economy of the nation. Euro Exim Bank Ltd.is one of the renowned and top-notch financial institutions, established in 2015.
Euro Exim Bank is a young and innovative international financial institution. They are headquartered in St. Lucia, in the West Indies, with a Representative Office in London and a network of affiliates, agents and partners in key locations, serving import and export businesses around the globe, facilitating the trade finance.
In today’s rapidly growing international markets, with the Belt & Road Initiative and expanding global hubs, trade finance continues to play a strategic role in cross-border flow and movement of goods and services valued at trillions of dollars annually.
They specialize in connecting corporate buyers and sellers, enabling businesses to economically and efficiently import goods and services. Moreover, they assist companies to fulfil their trade aspirations through financial instrument issuance and relay via SWIFT to correspondent institutions.
Their international teams of experts have years of Trade Finance and SWIFT experience of complex instruments and transacting via an extensive network of contacts and counterparties covering emerging markets, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.
They started as a small payment provider in the UK (SPI), however, due to diminishing margins and the crowded competitive nature of the business, it was clear that designation was no longer suitable to the company growth model. Spotting a gap in the market, the company applied for an international regulated banking license in St. Lucia, under the strict auspices of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA). This enabled them to provide the full range of banking services, with a focus on specialist trade finance.
They are now empowered to provide not only Letters of Credit, Standby Letters of Credit, but also regulated Bank Guarantees and Performance Bonds from their St. Lucia Head Office. Additionally, they are looking at extending their platforms with foreign exchange service, issuance of pre-paid cards and introduction of tradeable digital assets.
Helping You Stay Ahead of the Game
Let’s walk through how Euro Exim helps you to stay ahead, which requires constant vigilance. In the financial sector, successful firms find, service and retain sustainable clients, deliver trusted collaborate products with professional specialist staff, and above all provide innovative and low-risk solutions that free client cashflow.
Their wide range of clients operate in countries where there is demand, but access to fiat currency, knowledge of complex processes, lack of investment in infrastructure hamper them from being competitive and agile. Their approach, designed to mitigate risk remains dependent on strong KYC and indemnity processes, allowing clients through appropriate collateral requirements to trade more competitively and efficiently, placing them ahead of cash-strapped competitors.
With the outbreak of Coronavirus, an unfortunate consequence, in addition to the closure of factories, worldwide panic, stock market freefall and growing mortality rates, comes the expectation that banks will exercise margin calls and recall loans more aggressively, tighten their hold on cash where possible and restrict credit, especially in uncertain trade environments. Our approach to helping buyers with more appropriate flexible collateral will help to rebuild supply chains, re-establish trade lines and assist in maintaining cash flow in these difficult times facilitating commerce as production eventually resumes.
Keeping up the Pace
Within weeks, they have seen unprecedented global challenges with disrupted labour forces, supply chain shortages, pressure on health services, restricted travel and total country lockdowns. Add to this uncertainty access to consistent sources of economic cost-effective supplies, dramatically falling oil prices and zero output in powerhouse economies.
Internally, they have implemented new technology such as a blockchain architecture and AI solutions inside their trading platforms. Also, they introduced Ripple xCurrent and On-Demand Liquidity services, positioning them to meet and exceed buyers’ demand for alternative payment mechanisms and the ability to procure products and raw materials from new supply sources such as emerging markets.
Externally, their brand has grown significantly over the past five years, finding the market niche serving small and mid-tier companies and by carefully managing their exposure. They have grown exponentially and their strategic goal is to become the largest trade finance provider globally. They are recognised internationally as a major player, with a growing number of experts and sales resources in multiple locations.
Brand awareness has also increased through being proud sponsorship of key trade events, as contributors to global publications and recognized as award-winning thought-leaders collecting multiple accolades for their technology, service provision and executive innovation. This strategy has been instrumental in building their reputation, supported by their future-ready blockchain-enabled platform for instrument issuance and Ripple-powered frictionless payments and liquidity.
Coping with the Technology
In this new era of Technical dominance, Euro Exim Bank has actively embraced technology and attended a multitude of industry events to understand the impacts and benefits of technology.
As a result of careful and strategically planned implementations, they have been nominated for awards based on their workflow product and how they have integrated technology and process with other platforms.
Blockchain is one of the latest innovations to captivate the trade industry, and accordingly, they have implemented and enabled a full blockchain capability into their trade platform. However, no customers have specifically requested a blockchain-enabled transaction. Neither has anyone declined services that did not include AI, machine learning or DLT, which begs the question, are these technologies truly game-changing necessity or still hype? Time will tell.
The Clientele
At Euro Exim Bank, they deal exclusively with registered corporates, with clients based in the active markets of China, India, UAE, Malaysia, Africa, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, importing goods from all over the globe, transacting such diverse products as non-perishable ethically sourced frozen foods, vehicles, scrap, and raw metals, pulses, grain, nuts, garments, sewing machines, plastic piping, plumbing accessories, ceramics, etc.
They uphold and maintain strong policies on AML, KYC, PEPs and global sanction list checking regarding companies, individual identity, directors, prohibited and dual-use goods.
Who do they deal with? As an example, supporting local business in local currency transactions Euro Exim Bank worked with a supermarket group in Kenya needed to pay suppliers in other countries in Africa and across the globe but did not wish to continually buy USD or other fluctuating currencies from a local bank.
This affected cash flow and access to liquidity where their order size would be relatively small. Euro Exim Bank’s RippleNet solution helped the client with immediate payments in local currency through xCurrent, and further access to ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) offering unlimited low-cost liquidity using the XRP digital asset for settlement with certainty and immutability of transfer and settlement.
By remaining specialists in their outlook, service delivery and sector of business, they continue to build their reputation, customer base, geographic spread with their brand well recognized as a leading supplier.
An edge over the peers
To win the trust of the clientele and empower the market, it is quintessential to offer something distinctive. On the same notion, Euro Exim Bank tries to deliver the services that justify its uniqueness.
The cornerstones on which the foundation of Euro Exim Bank is built are trust, leadership, experience, personal relationships, country expertise, speed of response, cost-effective instruments and above all continued contact and information sharing.
Moreover, clients appreciate speaking with representatives by name and meeting locally, which contributes to the escalation and expansion of the business. They are at industry events regularly in key trade locations, where their opinions and experience are valued by the trade community and meeting face to face is vitally important.
Ensuring Quality is Instrumental
Delivering quality comes first for any entrepreneurial concern. One can’t compromise on the standards of quality. Therefore, at Euro Exim Bank the assurance of quality in solutions and services is the fulcrum.
Firstly, they exercise quality control – in the framework of their products and services ensuring that their legal and compliance teams work with management and sales in the design and approval of instruments. The complexity of trade deals, linked with regulatory, KYC and due diligence mandates, means that every instrument they issue must meet the standards with accountability, transparency, visibility and authority.
Secondly, they follow strict quality assurance guidelines – where quality is built into the production process. Staff check throughout the issuance process using sophisticated workflow tools, from the first sight of a client proforma invoice to ultimate issuance of Letters of Credit, Standby Letters of Credit, Performance Bonds or Bank Guarantees, guarding against any misinterpretation or misalignment of policy.
They also create quality into their IT systems and trade platform, with continuous review and responding to market requirements as regulation, liability, sanctions, company information and circumstances change.
Their service level agreements also reflect active monitoring of individual country legal and compliance nuances, ensuring they provide the most appropriate, effective, cost-effective solutions to their clients.
Story of Struggle
Challenges are the part of everyone’s journey, but to sail through them or sink into it depends on the person’s perspective.
As similar to many companies, at the outset, as with many trade finance players, Euro Exim bank were heavily paper-based, relying on manual processes with duplicated efforts and tedious error-prone data entry. They needed automation to resolve these issues if they were serious about being a long-term participant. Their management looked for commercial applications able to suit their way of working rather than adapting all their processes to a particular product.
Given their size, they decided to build, maintain and refine their architecture – allowing them to ignore legacy offerings and to benefit from a platform embedded with the latest developments such as DLT, blockchain enablement, AI, and fast API linkages.
By creating a solid IT architecture that allowed rapid implementation and integration of other services such as cash management, payments, and compliance, their self-sufficiency paid off in terms of speed to implement, integrate, train, control costs for parameterization, provide immediate audit and create intuitive user interfaces.
Key learnings from the detours in the path were to fully understand the market, find and train the right people, taking time with defining strategy and product design, doing solid research and taking a measured approach to all investments and looking at the real benefit of developments in regulation, compliance and IT.
From the story of struggle, let’s celebrate the company’s achievements and accolades.
Achievements and Accolades
They have been recognized for several major industry awards in prestigious magazines such as UK Parliamentary Review, International Finance, The European, CIO Review, World Business Review, European Business Magazine, The CEO Story CFI – with awards in 2018 and 2019, Silicon Review, Mirror Review, and featured in the world financial press.
The thirst for technology led them to be an early adopter for RippleNet services, namely blockchain-enabled real-time seamless payments (xCurrent) and ODL – On-Demand Liquidity. They were the first regulated bank to use these innovative digital asset-based services, which raised their profile and awareness significantly.
They are always investigating new applications and delivery mechanisms that make economic sense for them in IT culminating in their nomination for the award of ‘One of the 10 Best Fintech Solution Providers to Watch Out for’ in 2020.
Futuristic Approaches
The Company envisions a multitude of plans to execute in the future. Their plans include rapid sales team growth, more country coverage, technical enhancements to speed up instrument issuance processes, and accessing more clients in opportunistic emerging markets.
They are continually hearing of challenging barriers to trade for clients, left without cost-effective access to fiat currency, with no access to loans and instrument issuance services, as major banks pull out of trade services and even leave the local market.
Euro Exim Bank is well-positioned and ready to work with smaller currently disadvantaged companies, finding trade initiation solutions enabling them to rightfully and economically competitive in the wider international arena.
Message to the Business Connect Readers
“Building a business takes years, and relies on solid foundations. In the current uncertain economic climate, firms must be realistic in profit and investment outlook, exercise pragmatic management, hire professionals, release the unproductive, listen and learn constantly from peers and competition, understand value and contribution, not just expenditure, and ultimately work out what customers want and keep delivering it.
Our expansion journey is based on these solid principles, and we aim to be the long-term pre-eminent provider of sustainable trade finance services globally.”
~Graham Bright
