If you lead or oversee a trade finance operation, you’ve probably had this conversation with a corporate client:
“Why is my deal still not cleared? The documents are fine — what’s taking so long?”
More often than not, the delay isn’t in the document checking — it’s in the compliance bottleneck. Sanctions screening, PEP checks, adverse media reviews, dual-use goods detection — all critical steps, but in many banks, they happen after the initial review. That means a perfectly compliant set of documents can still sit idle for hours or days while it waits its turn in a separate compliance queue.
The Risk This Poses for Banks
For corporates moving goods across borders, time is money. A delay in clearing a trade transaction can mean:
- Late shipment releases, triggering demurrage costs.
- Missed payment deadlines, impacting working capital.
- Damaged client relationships when timelines slip.
With regulators tightening requirements across the globe, the number and complexity of checks are only increasing. Manual or siloed processes can’t keep up. Worse, these inefficiencies create operational risk if teams under pressure take shortcuts.
How Traydstream Fixes the Compliance Bottleneck
Our platform integrates compliance directly into the document journey — no handoffs, no unnecessary waiting:
- Real-Time Sanctions & PEP Screening — Instantly checks all parties against global watchlists via leading data providers.
- Dual-Use Goods Detection — AI scans every document for sensitive goods descriptions.
- Parallel Processing — Compliance runs alongside document validation, cutting total turnaround dramatically.
- Clear Audit Trail — Every check is logged, time-stamped, and ready for regulatory inspection.
This approach means clients get faster decisions without compromising on due diligence — and your teams work in sync, not in silos.
Case Study — European Bank
A major EMEA bank had a persistent backlog in its trade operations. Transactions often took 36+ hours to clear because documents went through two separate teams — first operations, then compliance. The compliance team worked in a different country and timezone, adding further delays.
After embedding Traydstream’s compliance features into their trade process:
- Clearance times dropped from 36 hours to 10 hours.
- Over 80% of transactions cleared without manual intervention.
- Exceptions were highlighted automatically, allowing the compliance team to focus only on high-risk cases.
Clients immediately noticed the difference. One corporate customer commented that the bank had gone from “lagging behind peers” to “setting the pace” in trade turnaround.
Stephan Hufnagl, CTO of Traydstream:
“Banks often tell us their biggest headache isn’t the checking itself — it’s the compliance handoffs. We’ve eliminated that friction by making compliance part of the process, not an afterthought.”
At SIBOS, the conversation on compliance will be dominated by efficiency and resilience. The banks that win will be those that can prove they can deliver both — without sacrificing client trust or regulatory standards.
