HOME
SERVICES
MARKET
PRICING
SUCCESS STORIES
PARTNERS
E-VISION
APPLY
CONTACTS

Information Technology (IT):

Application Service Provider (ASP)

The smooth functioning of business operations by PEFG will depend heavily on how information will be processed and exchanged within and outside the PEFG organization.

The main issue is related to establishing of full transaction disclosure linkages at the financial institutions' end of the PEFG-financial institution information exchange loop.

PEFG believes VPN technology, e.g. Checkpoint, will be a key IT backbone for guarantee underwriting and cementing two-way information flows with financial institutions, as well as triangular dialogue with exporters. PEFG will have to act as VPN services provider, either alone or in collaboration with some well-established Internet Service Provider (ISP) company. Such activity by PEFG will facilitate large transaction volumes and reduce PEFG per transaction operating overheads.

EDI (Electronic Document Interchange) is another area where PEFG must play a lead role. This will help in better turnaround times for the export-related activities. Again the PEFG survey identified a clear EDI-usage gap and one, in the context of guarantee underwriting, that PEFG may have to pioneer.

PEFG will take the lead by becoming an Application Service Provider (ASP) for export-related activities of participating financial institutions, as and where needed. The objective of PEFG serving as an ASP is to minimize the times required to achieve the advanced IT status central to PEFG functioning and viability and spread the per financial institution cost which may be incurred to upgrade existing infrastructure for information sharing with PEFG.

Transaction Review Expert System (ES)

The core business of PEFG is to provide guarantees on export financing. In this context, PEFG will have to ensure that a sound and standardized application scrutiny process is followed, adopting and adapting the commercially available expert system technology i.e. to customize software.

The reason for deploying an Expert System (ES) is to respond promptly and effectively to an applicant in the first stage of transaction scrutiny. Subsequently, the ES will also reduce the turnaround time for detailed assessment of the applications, as the ES is enriched with transaction knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (AI) pattern recognition.

The PEFG ES will follow a classic ES format, namely interaction based on a question-answer format.

A 27-rule, expandable ES decision-making 'Empty Shell' inference engine (backward-chaining, 'fuzzy logic' based) will be designed to assist this process and will anchor the STRS Guarantee underwriting conditions to be addressed: