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Roadmap to the electronic bill of lading
[ March 29, 2018 // Chris ]International freight forwarders’ body FIATA has signed a memorandum of understanding with electronic documents firm essDOCS to provide a framework to digitise bills of lading.
The Association will work on the digitisation of FIATA documents, starting with the electronic FIATA Bill of Lading (eFBL) and then the electronic House Bill of Lading (eHBL issued by NVOCCs) plus other FIATA documents.
EssDOCS’ CargoDocs electronic exchange will help prevent fraudulent copying and errors that might be associated with paper documents
Five FIATA members from diverse regions will participate in a pilot project to test the new CargoDocs system, across specified trade lanes.
Initially, FIATA members will simply replace their current printing of FBLs with an online, collaborative tool housed within essDOCS’ secure hosted servers. Members will be able to either draft their FBL online, and share it with their shipper before it is printed and signed, or allow their shipper to draft their own FBL before being printed and signed. The FBLs will be printed onto blank FBL paper which will be distributed by FIATA and signed by FIATA NVOCCs.
Phase 2 of the project will add various security features to help identify fraudulent FBLs and will be extended to include members’ own house BoLs.
In phase 3, FIATA members will be able to adopt fully electronic FIATA Bills of Lading (eFBL) or House Bills of Lading.