Infor, DBS Bank Team To Offer Digital Trade Financing For SMBs

Infor, which works in business cloud software, is partnering with DBS Bank to infuse the Infor Nexus global network of businesses with new digital trade financing capabilities to help speed up payments through the supply chain, according to a press release.

One of the first clients taking advantage of the new capabilities is “one of the world’s largest global apparel companies,” the release stated, and the tech helped to boost the company’s supply chain which consists of a lot of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Sriram Muthukrishnan, group head of trade product management at DBS Bank, said the partnership would help to boost data collection and help SMBs get more steady financing amid the stress and turmoil caused by the pandemic.

“Our collaboration with Infor enables greater transparency into complex supply chains and provides insights into the transaction patterns between an anchor and its ecosystem of suppliers,” he said, according to the release. “We leverage these insights to provide quicker and more cost-efficient financing to suppliers much earlier in the cycle, as compared to conventional post-shipment supplier financing programs. This is especially relevant today, as we continue to operate in an environment characterized by prolonged trade disruptions and tighter credit lines, where optimal working capital management is key to survival.”

According to Gary Schneider, vice president of sales for Infor Financial Supply Chain Management, the new collaboration works to combine DBS’s prioritization of supply chains with the cloud capabilities of Infor to help boost liquidity, which is currently a large priority for many companies.

DBS and Infor are also working on another new program to assess risk and credit worthiness for pre-shipment finance, which is expected to launch later this year, the release stated. The program will use supply chain data, provided by Infor’s cloud processing, to assess risk, doing away with outdated older models that left many suppliers under-funded or with challenges accessing capital.

In January, DBS launched a QR code-based B2B payment system to help speed up the flow of payments, including automated accounts reconciliation.