Envoy Group (Envoy) is teaming with maritime and regulatory technology provider Pole Star to offer compliance screening and vessel tracking. This will use Pole Star’s PurpleTRAC technology and link to Envoy’s blockchain technology.
Lee Tarone, CEO of Envoy Group, has commented: “Envoy is dedicated to increasing trust and liquidity for its clients, which Pole Star’s PurpleTRAC technology can facilitate. This is a game-changing partnership that will allow Envoy to fully digitise the flow of information within trade finance. Being able to navigate new regulations can be tricky and can cause reputational damage. Pole Star’s solution has enabled us to offer tracking and compliance verification to our clients.”
The problem
Mitigating money laundering and terrorist financing risk – as well as avoiding the criminal, reputational and commercial damage that would occur as a result of noncompliance – is of increasing importance to enterprises. As participants in complex supply chains, they are inevitably exposed along a supply chain to possible nefarious activities about which they may know little or nothing.
In consequence, commercial enterprises that use shipping for cargoes are incorporating ship tracking services into risk management strategies. This is where a service – like that of PurpleTRAC – becomes relevant. Developed to meet the needs of these enterprises, PurpleTRAC automates complex risk management and compliance procedures in a web-based solution.
Beyond the ship tracking dimension, enterprises are looking for ways to:
- streamline compliance
- reveal individual ships’ current and past exposure to risk
- provide an auditable and verifiable statement of that organisation’s sanctions compliance activity.
PurpleTRAC and Pole Star
Pole Star develops pioneering technologies. It seeks to keep clients at the forefront of maritime insight, thereby enabling decisions which can mitigate risks across maritime activity. Working with governments and businesses across the supply chain, Pole Star’s technologies turn complex data into accessible insight across:
- regulatory conformance
- sanctions screening
- trade compliance
- tracking
- monitoring
- ship security.
PurpleTRAC is the Pole Star solution which will enable Envoy’s customers to observe good governance by digitally tracking the places, organisations and entities with which those customers trade. It allows companies to:
- manage regulatory and reputational risk
- ensure transactions are compliant
- address financial crime compliance challenges (by offering complete vessel screening and tracking).
Envoy
Envoy uses blockchain technologies to bring efficiencies to global supply chain and trade finance. Built on R3’s Corda blockchain platform, Envoy accelerates the $17T annual global trade flows (before trade wars and/or Covid-19) into the digital age by:
- reducing inefficiencies
- injecting liquidity.
Using the R3 Corda network, the Envoy platform reduces the inefficiencies which often strangle global trade. Through fast validation of transactions between entities, that have been through full Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Client protocols, Envoy delivers instant trust. In addition, it:
- injects essential and vital funding to customers participating in the whole trade finance/supply chain collection of processes.
- connects buyers and sellers
- improves governance and transparency for all participants.
Simon Ring, Head of Financial Markets Compliance of Pole Star, has commented: “Given the complexity of the global sanctions and regulatory landscape relating to maritime trade, verifying trade-based transactions is one of the most laborious undertakings of compliance departments.
“As such, many companies have turned to innovative technologies like PurpleTRAC to automate, streamline and record their processes. Envoy is genuinely trying to redefine the trade finance process and we are very excited to be a part of that journey.”
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
Digitising the traditional, archaic, paper-based system which has enabled supply chains in the past is now insufficient. Improving supply chain efficiency is important. Managing risk, fraud and avoiding criminal exposure are increasing in importance. Being able to demonstrate compliance to regulatory authorities matters more and more.
The Envoy and Pole Star combination seeks to reduce inefficiencies, improve trust and satisfy regulators. Whether this is sufficiently different from what the likes of Marco Polo (also based on the R3 Corda blockchain) remains to be seen: maybe the ship tracking is a key differentiator.
