In our roles as the prior and existing Senior Technical Advisors to the ICC Banking Commission, access by practitioners to ICC Opinions has always been of paramount importance to us.
There is no doubt that Opinions should be more widely accessible.
Currently, ICC Opinions are approved by the Banking Commission, sent to National Committees and further distributed to members.
We believe that it would be worth considering a review of existing delivery and distribution channels for trade information originating from the ICC Banking Commission. Many of the issues and problems that are raised by practitioners could be resolved by enhanced knowledge of ICC Opinions and publications.
For whatever reason, there appears to be a bottleneck in relation to the availability of ICC Opinions in many countries and, within those countries, in a number of banks. The paperwork often reaches the required destination but remains on, or in, the desk of one individual. Further dissemination to all documentary credit practitioners, not just ICC members, should be feasible.
The answer may be via digitisation and making Opinions available online at no cost to all users. This will be an issue that we will follow with great interest.