Banks in Singapore team up to develop digital trade registry

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – DBS Group and Standard Chartered are leading a group of 12 other banks in Singapore to create a digital trade finance registry in a bid to mitigate the risk of trade fraud and boost transparency.

The move by commodity trade financiers in Singapore to create a central database to record trade transactions financed across banks comes after the industry lost billions of dollars due to a spate of defaults and cases of suspected trade fraud this year.

“A digital trade registry strengthens trade financing banks’ ability to avoid duplicate financing, and facilitates more sustained credit flow in trade financing,” Ho Hern Shin, an assistant managing director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement issued by DBS and Standard Chartered on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Ana Nicolaci da Costa)