I&M Bank plans five-market Surecomp trade finance rollout across Africa

I&M Bank has selected Surecomp to build a regional digital trade-finance platform, starting in Kenya before expanding the system across Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Bank One in Mauritius.

The rollout will combine Surecomp’s DOKA-NG back-office processing technology with its RIVO collaborative trade-finance platform. I&M said the project is intended to reduce manual processing and paperwork, shorten turnaround times and create a more consistent trade-finance service across its regional network.

The programme gives the project particular relevance beyond a conventional technology upgrade. I&M Group operates across the five markets included in the rollout, while its Kenyan bank already offers products including letters of credit, guarantees, documentary collections, invoice discounting and import bill refinancing.

DOKA-NG is designed to process a broad range of trade and supply-chain finance instruments, including letters of credit, guarantees, collections, receivables finance, approved-payables finance and ECA-covered export finance. RIVO provides a digital channel through which banks and corporate customers can manage trade instruments, exchange documents and track transactions.

Putting the two together can move more of the trade-finance process from customer initiation through to bank processing onto an integrated workflow. That can matter commercially because documentary trade remains operationally intensive, with manual data entry and document handling creating cost, delay and control risks.

I&M has not disclosed the value of the technology investment, implementation timetable for each country or expected transaction-volume uplift. The bank said the platform will begin in Kenya before expanding to the other four markets, so the announcement should not be read as confirmation that the entire regional rollout is already live.

Carolyne Mulandi, I&M Bank’s head of trade and financial institutions, said the investment was intended to simplify the customer experience and reduce turnaround times as businesses increasingly operate across markets.

For I&M, the strategic value lies in standardising infrastructure across a regional trade corridor rather than digitising one domestic operation. If executed as described, customers trading across East Africa and Mauritius should encounter a more consistent processing environment, while the bank gains a platform designed to handle rising transaction volumes with stronger operational and compliance controls.