← The village
No. 03 · The observatory
Trade finance
Trade finance still runs on paper. An AI-native overlay is the named challenger.
- Status
- Open
- Rank
- 18 of 35 in the atlas
- Scored
- 2026-10-05
- Report
- Back to the study
- Rank
- 18 of 35, published score 57.0
- Scoring date
- 2026-10-05, reported 2026-10-09
- Buyable
- $1.2B buyable midpoint, $0.7B to $2.1B recorded legacy spend
- Factors
- size 3, pain 1.7, AI fit 4, lock-in 3, crowding 1.3
- Coverage
- none recorded; AI-native challenger recorded
Trade finance
Ranked 18 of 35 at 57 out of 100.
Bank trade-finance back-office systems: letters of credit, collections and compliance.
What the evidence says
The checked evidence corroborates bounded pain. A J.P. Morgan trade head describes due-diligence work as manual and paper-heavy. Surecomp’s own page asks whether manual management hurts productivity. Both quotes are vendor-hosted. Neither measures prevalence.
Sources:
- Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp
- Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions
- Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc
- AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade
Providers
The card checked three incumbents: Finastra’s Trade Innovation, CGI’s Trade360 and Surecomp. Finastra reports over 200 bank organisations on an undated brief. CGI reports 322 bank locations, 93 countries and 163,500-plus portal users. Surecomp reports customers in over 80 countries. The denominators are incompatible. No ranking is supported.
Cleareye’s ClearTrade is the recorded challenger. Lloyds announced implementation from September 2024. That is a dated plan, not a documented go-live. The AI-native label is vendor self-designated.
Sources:
- Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc
- AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade
- Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions
- Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation)
- CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business
- Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp
- About Us | Surecomp
The pain
Document work remains manual and paper-based inside bank trade operations. Compliance burden and slow paper processing weigh on operations. Lloyds’ release records a 15-day conventional collection done digitally in about 24 hours.
Sources:
- Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions
- Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp
- Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc
- AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade
Events
Lloyds announced the ClearTrade implementation in September 2024. A completed go-live is not established. The 24-hour collection figure is a separate February 2024 result.
A DBS testimonial on Surecomp’s page praises IMEX. It is undated and vendor-hosted.
Sources:
- Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc
- AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade
- Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp
Limits
Both quotes sit on vendor pages. Two single-organisation anecdotes do not establish prevalence. The Lloyds result is not attributed as a ClearTrade causal outcome.
Sources:
- Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation)
- CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business
- Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp
- About Us | Surecomp
- Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions
- Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc
- AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade
In their words
Manual trade finance management impacting productivity?
Source: Surecomp back-office product page (vendor-authored question), undated
manual and paper-heavy processes associated with due diligence
Source: Global Head of Trade & Working Capital, J.P. Morgan, undated
Relevant workflows
6 recorded openings. A missing mapped round is a coverage gap, not an empty field.
| Workflow | Index | Labour | AI use | Core | Mapped |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client advisory, onboarding and service trade-finance:tf-client-advisory | 287 | $16.9B | 62% | non-core | 0 |
| Sanctions, dual-use and trade-based money laundering screening trade-finance:tf-sanctions-tbml | 167 | $8.0B | 24% | non-core | 0 |
| Document examination and discrepancy handling trade-finance:tf-doc-exam | 76 | $3.2B | 36% | non-core | 1 |
| Facility limits, booking and settlement trade-finance:tf-limits-settlement | -426 | $16.6B | 20% | touches core | 0 |
| LC issuance, advising and amendment trade-finance:tf-lc-issuance | -582 | $3.5B | 22% | touches core | 1 |
| Bank guarantees and standby LCs trade-finance:tf-guarantees | -588 | $6.4B | 0% | touches core | 0 |
Recorded providers
Provider claims carry their recorded kind and citations. Undisclosed figures stay undisclosed.
| Provider | Products | Parent | Claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finastra | Trade Innovation | unknown | cl-tf-fin-rel (inference) source cl-tf-fin-inc (inference) source cl-tf-fin-m1 (observation) source |
| CGI | CGI Trade360 | unknown | cl-tf-cgi-rel (inference) source cl-tf-cgi-inc (inference) source cl-tf-cgi-m1 (observation) source cl-tf-cgi-m2 (observation) source cl-tf-cgi-m3 (observation) source cl-tf-cgi-m4 (observation) source cl-tf-cgi-m5 (observation) source |
| Surecomp | IMEX, DOKA-NG | unknown | cl-tf-sur-rel (inference) source |
Recorded inputs
Raw scored inputs exactly as frozen. Values and units keep their recorded definitions.
| Factor | Input | Value | Count | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pain | keep_alive_share | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
| pain | backend_failure_share | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
| pain | app_rating_inverted | 4.334216111111111 | 6 | 1 |
| pain | failed_rate | 0.14285714285714285 | 7 | 1 |
| pain | s3_grade | weak | 1 | 3 |
| pain | mean | 1.6666666666666667 | unavailable | 1.7 |
| lockin | award_duration_months | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
| lockin | noncompetitive_share | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
| lockin | replacement_duration_months | 27 | 4 | 1 |
| lockin | regulator_approval | true | 1 | 5 |
| lockin | mean | 3 | unavailable | 3 |
| crowding | ai_native_traction | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| crowding | funding_per_billion | 8534859.274986485 | 2 | 1 |
| crowding | yc_2024_plus | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| crowding | mean | 1.3333333333333333 | unavailable | 1.3 |
| size | users_midpoint | 1052 | unavailable | unavailable |
| size | buyers_mid | 5461.5 | unavailable | unavailable |
| size | midpoint | 1171665481.2701447 | unavailable | unavailable |
| ai_fit | mean | 3.605909090909091 | 12 | 4 |
| ai_fit | unanswered | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
Recorded sources
44 recorded citations. Each link lands on the sources catalogue.
| Source | Locator |
|---|---|
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | captured lines L18-L34 (Trade Innovation heading, booking-engine description, product scope) |
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | captured lines L18-L34 (product scope, over-200-banks claim) and L49-L50 (generative AI feature) |
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | captured line L20 (over-200-banks claim); document ID at L0 and the omitted separate 28% market-share line with its outside-report footnote at L15-L17/L60-L61 |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L71-L78 (community-cloud SaaS platform description), L108-L111 (bank-branded portal synchronized with the Transaction Processing System) and L113-L120 (Transaction Processing System capabilities) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L127-L137 (CGI Trade360 at a glance metrics) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L128-L129 (25 years of operation) and L182 (© 2025 CGI footer) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L130-L131 (322 bank locations globally) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L132-L133 (93 countries supported) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L134-L135 (15 million transaction annual run rate) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L136-L137 (163,500+ portal users) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L77-L91 (IMEX/DOKA-NG product section and STP claims) and L104-L110 (key features) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L77 and L90-L91 (product heading, over-80-countries footprint, STP claims) |
| About Us | Surecomp | captured lines L75-L76 (vendor early-industry-position claim and forty-year tenure, over-eighty-country footprint) and L194 (over 300 employees) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured line L90 (financial institutions in over 80 countries) |
| About Us | Surecomp | captured line L76 (customer footprint over eighty countries) and L194 (over 300 employees, 16 countries) |
| Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc | captured lines L599-L607 (publication date, partnership, implementation from this month, OCR/ML/NLP scope, spokesperson statement) |
| AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade | captured lines L441-L448 (back-office integration, bank alliances utilising ClearTrade, Lloyds ongoing-use statement) |
| Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions | captured lines L422-L437 (AI-native heading, explainable AI/LLM intelligence, native-AI ClearTrade description) and L452-L455 (sanctions-screening capability item) |
| Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc | captured lines L599-L607 (04 September 2024 publication date and release body: partnership, implementation scope, spokesperson statement) |
| Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions | captured homepage, accessed 2026-10-06 |
| AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade | captured article, accessed 2026-10-06 |
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | captured lines L18-L34 (Trade Innovation heading, over-200-banks claim, product scope) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L71-L78 (cloud platform) and L127-L137 (at-a-glance metrics) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L77-L91 (IMEX/DOKA-NG heading, over-80-countries footprint, STP claims) |
| About Us | Surecomp | captured lines L75-L76 (vendor early-industry-position claim and forty-year tenure, over-eighty-country customer footprint) |
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | captured line L20 (over-200-banks claim) |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | captured lines L127-L137 (at-a-glance metrics) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured line L90 (over-80-countries footprint) |
| Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions | captured lines L534-L537 (J.P. Morgan testimonial and attribution) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L79-L81 (productivity question and digital-solutions framing) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L83-L88 (regulation and scaling-pressure questions) |
| Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc | captured line L609 (February 2024 collection took 15 days, reduced to c. 24 hours) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L79-L91 (symptom questions, footprint, STP) and L121-L127 (DBS testimony) |
| Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions | captured lines L534-L543 (J.P. Morgan and Lloyds testimonials) |
| Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc | captured lines L599-L609 (dated announcement and separate February 2024 result) |
| AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade | captured lines L445-L448 (bank alliances utilising ClearTrade, Lloyds ongoing use) |
| Lloyds Bank partners with Cleareye.ai - Lloyds Banking Group plc | captured lines L595-L609 (date, partnership, planned implementation, spokesperson statements, separate February 2024 result) |
| AI is Transforming Trade Finance | Cleareye ClearTrade | captured lines L445-L448 (vendor article: Lloyds partnership recap and ongoing-use statement) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | captured lines L121-L127 (DBS testimonial and attribution) |
| Back Office Trade Finance Processing: IMEX & DOKA-NG | Surecomp | |
| Homepage - Cleareye | Future-Proof Trade Finance Solutions | |
| Navigating trade and supply chain finance - for today and tomorrow (Finastra Trade Innovation) | |
| CGI Trade360: All you need to power your global trade business | |
| About Us | Surecomp |
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