Last week, I was back in Singapore to attend GTR Asia, the leading trade finance conference in Asia, as a speaker on two panels. Over the last year, I have learnt quite a lot about the esoteric subject of electronic Bill of Lading, so I was very happy to be involved.

My second panel consisted of members of ICC, Banks, Shipping, and technology providers. In contrast with my first panel, I found myself becoming the sole champion of eBL:

“We don’t need eBL, we already have Sea Waybill.”

“The problem is with the eBL solution providers, who are unable to scale up.”

There was even a heckler in the audience asking why the panel had not managed to push for the adoption of eBL for the past 25 years. Who said that industry conferences were dry?  

Kudos to Vincent OBRIEN asa moderator in keeping a very engaging conversation going.

As my fellow panelist Dr. Krishna Prasad K S explained: “Adoption is slow because of sheer ignorance!”

My 3 key takeaways from the panel 

The “Cargo Cult” of the paper Bill of Lading.

The reality is most people are not experts on the Bill of lading. Most people interact with it for work and have been told by those before them that it is an important document. Few have questioned its role or the way in which it is currently used. 

Beyond lost Bills of Lading or an outright pandemic, there hasn’t been much urgency to change the current process. Everyone also thinks they don’t have the agency to do so anyway, because it involves a complicated web of parties. 

Vincent OBRIEN and Dr. Krishna Prasad K S suggested that we should have a much more realistic objective to consolidate three original Bills of Lading to a single original Bill of Lading. 

Although I know where the view comes from, I hope as an industry that we can be much more ambitious!

Perceived roadblocks are not the real roadblocks to adoption

The historically low adoption of eBL has been blamed on technology, legal, and interoperability. Yet in my recent conversations with customers and partners, it is clear these are not the real roadblocks to meaningful adoption.

The technology is already here. Bolero International (WiseTech Global Group) and ICE Digital Trade (formerly essDOCS) have proven for decades that Bill of Lading can be safely digitised. With the new crop of blockchain enabled eBLs like WaveBL or IQAX eBL, technology really should not be a concern for anyone including banks. eBL systems have already been deployed at scale!

MLETR adoption is important, and International Chamber of Commerce has been doing a fantastic job advocating for it. But equally we have seen China which has not yet adopted MLETR, lead eBL adoption over the past two years.

The last perceived roadblock is interoperability. This is a valid concern, and we will never get to 100% eBL adoption with a single system. But by focusing so much on interoperability now, when adoption is still low, aren’t we putting the cart before the horse?

We need to tell a better story

I often hear the three same arguments to push for eBL adoption. Unfortunately, I think they are not strong enough to create meaningful adoption.

“eBL is cheaper than courier fees.” Some customers in China batch send a stack of Bills of Lading every other day, which means the unit cost of paper Bill of Lading is very low. Price alone cannot be the reason to adopt eBL.

“eBL allows for higher efficiency.” Unless we have a repeat of Covid-19, adopting eBL is not a 10x customer experience improvement. Of course, for some specific routes (Asia to US/Canada, Brazil and short intra-Asia) there are distinctive operational reasons for which eBL is far superior.

“eBL is better for the environment.” I do believe corporations are increasingly conscious of their impact on the environment, but without a way to showcase the impact of their greener choices, this is not a sole reason to adopt eBL.

So, what will drive meaningful adoption? 

I have come to the realisation on this trip that we can’t have meaningful adoption unless we address two fundamental issues.

We need a more ambitious vision.

Most people think that eBL adoption only means switching from a piece of paper to a PDF over the blockchain! We need a more powerful and ambitious narrative to rally around to drive change across the industry.

I have been ruminating on what I think could be a vision that does the potential of eBL justice. I hope to share this in a separate piece soon.

Stay tuned!

We need more compelling use cases that are only possible by adopting eBL.

eBL can only demonstrate its value when a wide ecosystem of partners adopts it for the same shipment. Thus, we need more events where we can have daily users of bill of lading across banks, insurance companies, shipping lines, freight forwarders, customs, terminals and BCOs discuss and come up with new use cases only made possible by eBL.

Again, stay tuned!

The journey to 100% eBL adoption is still long and challenging, but I believe that today we already have all the ingredients to make it happen. What is still unclear and exciting is where 100% eBL adoption will lead us to!

Feel free to provide your views in the comments, even better if you disagree with my points.