HSBC, a leading trade finance bank, is working with IBM to develop a cognitive intelligence solution combining optical character recognition with advanced robotics to make global trade safer and more efficient.

HSBC’s Global Trade and Receivables Finance (GTRF) team facilitates over $500 billion of documentary trade for customers every year, and in doing so must manually review and process up to 100 million pages of documents, ranging from invoices to packing lists and insurance certificates.

The new solution uses IBM’s advanced analytics technology, including intelligent segmentation and text analytics, to identify, digitize, and extract key data within these documents before feeding it into the bank’s transaction processing systems.

HSBC is currently using the technology to analyze English-language import and export bills in several markets in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the MENA region. The aim is to enhance the solution so it can read documents in French, Spanish, and Chinese.