Case Study

Testing digital can guarantee solutions for surety

The first Italian trial on the entire surety system started by CeTIF, SIA and Reply.

The solution

The 'Digital Guarantees' project aims to create a collaborative digital platform for the digitalization and dematerialization of bank and insurance guarantees, facilitating the coordination of various market users (particularly guarantors, contractors and policy holders) and making guarantees easier to manage while also reducing fraud.

The Digital Guarantees platform, which supports the tools and processes of individual companies, is developed in a Sandbox and on top of the CORDA protocol. It aims to support the actors in the end-to-end process of issuing and managing a guarantee, up to the process of release and enforcement.

In particular, the solution allows management of a full-digital process and is open to all users in the ecosystem, guaranteeing the confidentiality of business information, as well as opening up third-party data providers and value-added services offered by other market players.

The ecosystem

More than 50 stakeholders from the banking, insurance, financial, public administration and corporate sectors, including guarantors, guaranteed parties and policy holders participated in the testing phase, with the collaboration of the Bank of Italy and IVASS as part of the scientific committee.

These stakeholders included: Acquedotto Pugliese, ANCE Lombardia, ANCI Digitale, ANCI Lombardia, AON, ASMEL, Assolombarda, Banca Mediolanum, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Popolare di Puglia e Basilicata, and Banca Popolare di Sondrio, among others, actively participated in the initiative, as well as Banco BPM, Cattolica Assicurazioni, CEDACRI, the Municipalities of Bari and Milan, Confindustria Digitale, CONSIP, HERA, ICCREA Banca, InfoCamere, Innolva, Intesa Sanpaolo, Poste Italiane, Reale Group, Regione Lombardia - ARIA, Regione Siciliana, Roma Capitale, Terna, and VIVIgas energia.

Benefits of the solution

The main benefits tested and confirmed during the pilot phase of the trial by participants include:

  • Digitalization of the process and collaboration between counterparties. This was the most distinctive and appreciated aspect of the ecosystem according to participants.

  • Fraud reduction: the use of the platform allows a potential reduction in fraud, estimated by counterparties at around 30% on average

  • Process efficiency: the platform enables guarantors, contractors and policy holders to potentially reduce the total costs related to guarantees, leading to a saving in excess of 50%. In this context, a key aspect is the dematerialization of the guarantee, which simplifies management and eliminates the possibility of documentation loss

  • Automation and simplification of the tender management process.

Next Steps

Based on the trial effectiveness of the trial and positive assessments by key players in the management of guarantees in Italy, the platform development will continue. Further technological, functional and regulatory improvement activities have been launched with the aim of making the platform fully operational and available on the market in the last quarter of 2022.