The Arc AI Lab · Trade Finance, Agentic
08:00

Before anyone arrives, the desk has already run.

TFA is a multi-agent AI system for trade finance operations. It does the overnight groundwork — reading, vetting, briefing — so your morning opens to one page and a decision. The groundwork is machine. The judgement is yours.

While you slept
Overnight intake Pricing Screening Document prep Line check Morning brief Approval pending

The judgement is the easy part. Everything around it isn't.

Most of a trade finance day disappears into assembly — pricing, screening, document checks, line tracking — by hand, across separate systems, against the clock. TFA takes the assembly. Your team maintains the oversight and decisions.

How It Works

One overnight run. Six moves.

At 08:00 each weekday, before anyone is in, TFA begins on its own — no one needs to start it.

08:00

01Reads the inbox Autonomous

TFA picks up the deals that arrived overnight and structures them for processing — no manual data entry, no re-keying between systems.

08:02

02Vets every deal, four ways Autonomous

Before a deal reaches a human, it is priced, screened, document-checked and matched to a facility. Consistent, and never skipped.

08:11

03Writes one morning brief Autonomous

The desk arrives to a single page: the new deals, what to approve, what to issue, the margin so far, and anything urgent today.

You walk in

04A person signs off Human Gate

TFA prepares and recommends — it does not approve. Each deal is confirmed by a named person in one action, recorded with a full audit trail.

Through the day

05Finances the buy, tracks the sale Autonomous

New and ongoing buy and sell legs are monitored. TFA tracks the matched trades, and margins stay visible in real time with price feeds.

On settlement

06Settles, and frees the line Autonomous

Upon settlement, the buy-side credit instrument closes, the sale payment lands, and credit-line headroom returns automatically — ready for the next cargo, no manual reconciliation.

Four checks · every deal · every time
Pricing
Values the deal against the right market reference.
Screening
Counterparty checked against sanctions & dual-use lists.
Documents
Credit and shipping documents verified. Applications get prepped.
Line fit
Confirms a bank line has the headroom.
The Morning Brief

The morning starts with 1 page, not 8 systems.

New deals, approvals pending, LCs to issue, running margin, and same-day alerts — consolidated into a single view the moment the desk opens.

Prototype output — illustrative demo data
TFA · Morning BriefWeekday · 08:14
3Deals
1To issue
+$1.4MTF margin
1Alert
Crude · $78M · Bank AMatched · +$1.4M
Gasoil · $84M · Bank B44% sold · 50,000 MT open
Gasoline · $46M · Bank CNegative margin flagged

AI recommends. You decide.

A mandatory human approval gate on every deal. Designed with system and internal controls in place.

Everything on record.

Every recommendation, approval and state change logged. Each deal reconstructable, end to end.

Inside your walls.

Designed to run privately on your own infrastructure — your data stays inside your environment, with nothing shared out.

End of Day · 19:00
19:00

After everyone leaves, the desk reports back.

At close, the day is compiled into a single end-of-day report — positions, running margin, exceptions and tomorrow's watch-list — on the CFO's desk before the lights go off.

End-of-day reporting — in refinement & testing

An agentic project, built in the open.

TFA explores how multi-agent AI can take on the overnight groundwork of a trade-finance desk — reading, vetting and briefing — while every decision stays with a person. It's built at The Arc, the lab behind the JEPX Bid Optimisation System. If it speaks to your desk, I'd be glad to walk you through it.