Established in 2003, as the result of a merger between Hamburgische Landesbank and Landesbank Schleswig-Holstein, HSH Nordbank is one of Northern Germany's leading financial institutions. With two headquarters in Hamburg and Kiel the firm has total assets of approximately €151 billion and around 3,400 staff.

As part of an enterprise-wide comprehensive IT replacement project, HSH Nordbank decided to improve its documentary settlement system by implementing SmartStream's TLM Trade Finance solution.

TLM Trade Finance is now managing the firm's Letters of Credit and collection business for import and export customers. It is also processing HSH Nordbank's foreign guarantee business and standby Letters of Credit, alongside specialist service documentation including ship sales transactions and conditional payments.

Nico Frommholz, Head of Cash Management & Documentary Business at HSH Nordbank, commented: "When examining potential solutions for automating our trade finance processes, it was critical and it was flexible enough to manage both the traditional items and documentation unique to our bank. SmartStream's TLM Trade Finance solution met these requirements and provides us with an ideal platform for processing a wide range of documentation at greater automation, thereby improving the quality of our data."

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream, added: "We are delighted that HSH Nordbank selected TLM Trade Finance as the backbone of their trade finance business and is now live on the solution. This successful project is further evidence of TLM Trade Finance's flexibility to meet critical documentation processing needs and SmartStream's capabilities to effectively manage complex trade finance projects. With TLM Trade Finance at the centre of their operations the firm is now seeing a significant improvement in data quality and well as reduced risk that comes with enhanced automation."