The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has tapped Finastra to power its trade finance operations, enabling NBP to lower transaction costs for its corporate customers.

Fusion Trade Innovation, Finastra's all-inclusive working capital solution, enables "frictionless" trade and supply chain financing, encompassing buyer and seller loans, letters of credit, collections, guarantees, and government support for export credit and SME loans.

"Fusion Trade Innovation will provide us with the tools we need to modernise, future-proof, and ultimately grow our business," says Imran Farooqui, senior executive vice president and group chief of operations at NBP.

A development toolkit that is included with Fusion Trade Innovation enables banks to create new features on their own while contracting out the maintenance to Finastra.

Manish Joshi, managing director of Finastra for the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific areas, states: "Effective trade and supply chain finance management has never been more crucial due to rising complexity, changing regulations, and the cost of capital.

NBP taps Finastra for trade finance solution







"In this environment, banks that are constrained by legacy infrastructures, fragmented transactional views, and disjointed processes will struggle to successfully grow their businesses."

InfoTech, a Finastra-approved vendor in Pakistan, oversaw the transaction and carried out the solution.

Asim Haque, the company's vice president of its banking services business unit, claims that the technology can automate NBP's nationwide trade activities, which were before controlled manually.

"Integrating this with the core, treasury, and Swift not only gives NBP 360-degree visibility of its trade transactions, but it has also managed to reduce operational costs," Haque continues.