HSBC joins IBM to develop cognitive intelligence to eliminate language barrier

The world’s leading trade finance bank, HSBC is planning to work with IBM to develop an innovative cognitive intelligence solution that combines optical character recognition with advanced robotics to procure global trade safer and more efficient for thousands of businesses.

The new solution propounded uses IBM’s advanced analytics technology, including intelligent segmentation and text analytics, to identify, digitize and extract key data within these documents before feeding it into the bank’s transaction processing systems; boosting accuracy whilst freeing up staff for more value - adding activities.

“The average trade transaction requires 65 data fields to be extracted from 15 different documents, with 40 pages to be reviewed,” said Natalie Blyth, HSBC’s Global Head of GTRF. “By digitizing this process we will make transactions quicker and safer for both buyers and suppliers, leading our industry forwards, and we will reduce compliance risks through an enhanced ability to manage huge volumes of data.”

“The problem is how to capture semi-structured documents with highly variant content through an analogue process, and no-one has the perfect answer,” said Roger Welch, Industry (Financial) Expert and Solution Architect for IBM Analytics ECM practice. “In our experience, no trade finance solution has come as far or done as much as this new solution.” 

Today, HSBC is using the technology to analyze English-language import and export bills in various markets of Asia, Europe, America and the MENA region. The team of the bank aims at enhancing the solution so that it can aptly read a wider range of documents and languages including French, Spanish and Chinese.

“We are continuously investing in technologies that will improve the way we work for the benefit of our customers and our people,” said Natalie Blyth.