Welcome to TradeSun
San Diego, CA – July 5, 2019 – TradeSun raises $2.6 million in a SAFE round. Funding was led by Mark Gunton, Chairman of the Board, and encompassing 12 other individuals TradeSun raised $2.6 million through a Simplified Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE).
Originally published on Global Trade Review website 02-Jul-2019
A new fintech company, Tradesun, has entered the trade finance space, launching an AI-driven solution to digitise and automate the processing of trade documents. It is currently working with nine banks across the globe to pilot its cloud-based application.
The company’s AI solution combines optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) technology to read and extract information from a wide variety, type and quality of complex trade documents. It simultaneously scans for suspicious activity and flags risks of regulatory and fraudulent infractions by checking all data against compliance and business rules.
Tradesun was launched as a company last year by the founder of Data Skill, a technology firm that has been running since 1981, initially providing a contract system for the US department of defence.
In 2011, Data Skill started developing an AI solution for multiple industries. Since 2017, it has been working to implement the system with one of the largest trade finance banks in the world, having already run pilots with the bank over the previous year.
Now incorporated officially as Tradesun, the fintech firm is fully focused on trade finance. Its new solution differs from the previous version in that it is hosted on Amazon Web Services and made available to clients under a software as a service (SaaS) model.
And while the previous solution was powered by IBM Watson, Tradesun has now developed its own algorithm that is focused specifically on trade documents such as letters of credit, bills of lading and insurance forms.
“We’re now 100% focused on trade finance, and rather than having customised solutions for individual companies to give them a competitive advantage, we are making this available to the whole trade finance banking industry,” Tradesun’s CEO and founder Nigel Hook, tells GTR.
“Over the last few years, working with one of the world’s largest trade finance banks, the solution has been trained on loads of trade documents, and because it’s an AI system, it gets smarter over time. That’s why it’s very accurate in the classification of types of documents and the extraction of the trade data and matching between documents. It’s now reached a point where we feel very comfortable that it’s getting excellent performance right out of the box for new bank customers.”
Within many banks, the document checking process is still a manual, labour-intensive job. According to Hook, the Tradesun solution has so far amplified the users’ throughput by three to seven times.
“Using AI automation, the number of documents a bank can check every day is multiplied many times,” he says. “We make the checkers into ‘super checkers’. What is also important when you talk about the interception of fraud activities is the thoroughness of being able to extract all the data and check for red flags and sanctions breeches in real time. Finally, we are now helping the banks’ customers, because the turnaround is faster.”
Production later this year
Tradesun is currently running pilots with nine banks across six continents and has also been working on a trial with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to help flag suspicious transactions. The company anticipates being in production with the first clients later this year.
Tradesun is not the only young fintech player using emerging technology to help banks automate what is today an extremely paper-based and manual industry, with similar solutions having been presented to the trade finance market over the past couple of years.
Traydsteam, for one, launched its AI solution in 2017 and went live with its first bank client last year. It is now working with Finnish technology firm Nokia and three banks – OP Group, SEB and Standard Chartered – to pilot the application, which the company says can reduce the average time it takes a bank to conduct a document check from four hours to minutes.
Conpend is another company operating in this space. It recently announced it is working with Germany’s Commerzbank to integrate the system into its back office, with the bank claiming to be able to automate 80% of its “first line of defence” compliance checks of its trade finance processes by 2020.
Meanwhile, Hook at Tradesun sees it only as a positive for the wider trade finance market that a growing number of players are now helping banks implement AI for the processing of trade documents.
“It’s going to help trade finance in underserved markets in the world, which are highly risky, and so, they have trouble getting trade finance,” he says. “But with an application like Tradesun, it simplifies everything for importers and exporters and banks on both sides. So it’s going to generate a lot more financing in countries which have struggled in the past.”
San Diego, CA – April 24, 2019 – The Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT) is hosting their Global Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA on April 28th through May 1st, 2019. This event brings together organizations from across the globe who are actively engaged in international transaction banking, and the topic of this year’s meeting is “Cutting Through the Noise: What’s Relevant in an Age of Transformation.”
According to their website, BAFT.org, the meeting intends to help its members “see the opportunities and navigate through the challenges” in today’s digital age. Banks all over the world are currently looking into machine learning to recast trade finance, and TradeSun is showcasing its exponential platform to BAFT members so they can experience it firsthand.
On Monday, April 29th and Tuesday, April 30th, TradeSun will be demonstrating their breakthrough trade finance platform in the private room off Torreyana Grille, on the lower level of the Hilton Torrey Pines. The team will also be attending the conference themselves and will be available for informal demos and conversation on all four days.
Dan Scanlan, Trade Finance Advisor for Trade Sun, says, “It’s great to be working for such an innovative AI company that has software that will have a significant impact on trade processing. As a former board member of BAFT, I’m very excited to be attending the conference in the beautiful Torrey Pines, just a stone’s throw away from the TradeSun head office in Del Mar.”
Those who are interested in pre-registering for a demo can call 1-800-481-3282 to sign up. Otherwise, they are welcome to meet with the team any of the four days or stop by the room off Torreyana Grille on Monday or Tuesday to see what TradeSun can offer.
San Diego, CA – April 15, 2019 – Following the appointment of Mark Gunton, the former Chief Risk Officer for HSBC in North America as its Board Chairman, TradeSun has added to their international leadership group through the appointment of Wyn James as SVP, tasked with leading the international sales drive into banks and other trade centric multinationals.
Wyn is an experienced Global Banking and Business Process Sales leader, who spent 25 years in the Banking, Capital Markets and Investment/Alternatives (Hedge Funds/Private Equity) arena in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore with Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch. For the past 4 years he has led sales teams offering digital transformation through automation and AI technology. Wyn will be spearheading TradeSun’s global expansion and driving that from the regional APAC office in Singapore.
“Having been introduced by a long-term mutual friend, I’ve had the chance to get to know Wyn and appreciate his talents over the last 12 months. Metaphorically I really see Wyn as being our Centre Forward superstar, although his passion and playing days were in Rugby! He’s actually the epitome of a dynamic leader and relationship builder and we welcome him on board.” – Nigel Hook, CEO
San Diego, CA – March 19, 2019 – Elevating its rapid trajectory, TradeSun has attracted yet another catalyst in Dan Scanlan, Board Advisor. Scanlan is a transaction banking executive with more than 30 years of trade finance experience, working in various capacities including sales, product, and operations of global trade.
Currently located in San Diego, he was previously the regional head of transaction banking for Standard Chartered Bank in the Americas, managing the cash management, trade finance and custody businesses for Standard Chartered Bank, a position he held from June 2007 through July 2017.
Before joining Standard Chartered Bank, Scanlan was responsible for Global Trade at Bank of America (2002-2007) where he and his team initiated the first global supply chain finance program for the bank. He joined Bank of America in 1994 in Hong Kong, where he spent eight years managing regional cash management and trade finance sales teams.
“Dan has already sparked enormous contributions to our team, and it is fortuitous that he comes from the first adopter of this trade NLP solution. He is now being instrumental in enhancing our compliance, sanction screening and anti-money laundering features in TradeSun 3.0,” said Nigel Hook, CEO TradeSun.
With an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Dan Scanlan joins fellow global banking executives Wyn James and Mark Gunton as investors in the exponential trade finance platform – TradeSun.
San Diego, CA – February 19, 2019 – TradeSun is rapidly emerging onto the scene and is quickly building a competitive brand that eclipses all other trade finance solutions. In a recent announcement, joining this stellar team is Mark Gunton, former Chief Risk Officer and Senior Executive Vice President of HSBC USA and HSBC North America.
Gunton brings with him a wealth of global experience and knowledge, having held responsibility for all risk functions in North America, including Credit Risk, Operational Risk and Market Risk. He joined HSBC in 1977 and held numerous HSBC senior management positions in Commercial Banking, Corporate Banking and Trade Finance in Asia, Europe, Americas and the Middle East.
More recently Gunton has been advising and investing in a number of financial technology startups and brings his experience and insight to his Board role with TradeSun. Gunton noted that TradeSun brings a best in class scalable solution to the checking of trade documents and compliance screening. The response and feedback from a large number of banks and partners has been very encouraging.
Nigel Hook, the founder and CEO of TradeSun noted that with his knowledge of and relationships with both investors and customers, as well as his extensive background in finance, Mark Gunton will be a welcome addition to the TradeSun team and is sure to bring a valuable perspective to the board as its chair.
San Diego, CA – February 8, 2019 – TradeSun 3.0, a groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence (AI) and patent pending cloud platform, is coming out from under the DataSkill umbrella, where it has been evolving for years. Since 1981, DataSkill has been supporting some of the world’s leading companies to innovate and revolutionize their industries with custom solutions in AI, document analytics, robotic vision, deep learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Upon winning a global trade finance request for proposal (RFP) in 2017, DataSkill implemented TradeSun 2.0 for one of the world’s largest trade finance institutions. While proving the customized installation for over 2,000 makers and checkers, the minds behind TradeSun were constantly innovating the software, adding a new patent pending algorithm and architecting ultra-efficiency in the latest cloud technology, resulting in TradeSun 3.0.
“A long time in the making for sure with over a decade developing our AI technology and the last five years focused on trade finance, we now have a game changing platform for simplifying this heavily manual industry,” says Nigel Hook, CEO.
TradeSun powers the quick processing of trade finance contracts while simultaneously intercepting regulatory and fraudulent infractions. TradeSun combines deep learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to synthesize information from a wide variety, type and quality of complex trade documents. By guiding the knowledge worker, the Maker, the Checker and the Compliance Officer through their natural workflow, TradeSun amplifies the throughput, turnaround and thoroughness of trade operations; essentially transforming every Maker and Checker into super-makers and super-checkers.
In launching its own identity separate from DataSkill, TradeSun is building its brand with trade finance banks and related entities across the world. The new TradeSun exponential trade platform is simplifying and speeding up the whole chain in trade finance.
A brief history of TradeSun:
