Published: July 25, 2018
Jacco De Jong and Sunil Senapati join the company at a time of expansion, with ever more global clients seeking to digitise their paper processes.
In July, Bolero International made two new senior appointments with a view to accelerating growth. Jacco De Jong, an experienced trade finance professional, has been appointed head of global strategic business development, while Sunil Senapati, who previously worked with Oracle, is the new director of trade finance, Asia-Pacific region.
“It’s all about having industry knowledgeable people who can understand what’s happening in this very fast growing area of business,” CEO Ian Kerr tells EMEA Finance. “Our strategy is about growing trade digitisation and that requires having the right people to explain the benefits and the business proposition.”
A leader in trade finance digitisation, Bolero International celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. The company was formed in 1998 as a joint initiative between Swift and the global logistics and insurance industry, and has subsequently built up a strong reputation in the field.
“They thought it would be a great idea if, rather than global trade relying on pieces of paper and manual processes, we could bring together sellers, buyers, banks, carriers and shipping companies into a secure digital platform to make things more efficient,” says Kerr. “I think it’s fair to say Bolero was quite ahead of its time. This industry has been quite conservative in terms of adoption of new technology, and we’ve probably made more progress in the last few years than we did in the previous fifteen.”