Finastra and Tesselate launch trade finance-as-a-service platform

Financial software applications provider Finastra and digital transformation consultancy Tesselate have launched ‘Tegula Trade Finance as a Service’, a new service designed to provide US banks with an end-to-end pre-packaged solution for “faster and easier” trade finance digitalisation.

Trade finance is a complex industry that still relies heavily on manual and, often, fragmented processes, according to Jim McMahon, managing director, head of enterprise sales and strategic partnerships, Americas at Finastra.

The launch of new trade finance-as-a-service platform, Tegula, means US banks can automate manual processes and adapt to new demands with a quicker time-to-market and value, enabled by Finastra ‘Trade Innovation’ and ‘Corporate Channels’.

The latter is a digital banking platform that provides banks with a single portal to unify trade, cash, supply-chain finance, lending, and treasury services for corporates, while ‘Trade Innovation’ is an end-to-end solution for frictionless trade and supply chain finance that uses straight-through processing, digitisation, and data analytics.

Through Finastra’s ‘FusionFabric.cloud’, banks can easily integrate fintech applications that make use of the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation tools.

This access to Finastra’s wider fintech ecosystem in combination with the new cloud-based service ‘Tegula’, will help to future-proof banks, as well as enable banks to increase revenue streams, expand into new markets, and strengthen security.

“Our combined service with Tesselate delivers the automation and intelligence needed to increase efficiencies and decrease processing times, risk, errors, and total cost of ownership,” said McMahon.

“Importantly, the all-in-one solution promotes interoperability of trade finance processes to reduce friction and complexity, while giving banks the agility to enhance existing, or launch new, services. We are bringing together Finastra and Tesselate’s industry-leading solutions, services, and expertise to make digitalisation as seamless as possible for banks.”

By offering Tegula as a scalable, cloud-hosted, and fully-managed trade finance-as-a-service platform, banks can take advantage of the benefits of digitalisation without the need to invest in additional resources. This managed service also removes the burden of resourcing IT teams with the necessary skills, allowing banks to focus on their core business, said Alexandre Arnoux, chief revenue officer and managing partner at Tesselate.

Arnoux added: “Banks can take a modular approach to implementation for better cost and resource control, and we provide the ongoing updates, enhancements, and new capabilities at speed.

“Finastra and Tesselate are natural partners; we are working together to accelerate trade finance digitalisation for any size of bank.”

Further listening: How the financial services industry is embracing change – Radha Suvarna, chief growth and product officer at Finastra on the Open Banking Expo Unplugged podcast.