Receiving the inaugural ICC Wilbert Ward Trade Finance Excellence Award is a considerable honour. To receive it together makes the occasion particularly special. We have spent much of our professional lives working with documentary credits, and sharing this recognition gives us an opportunity to reflect on the work that brought us here.
On 20 October 1926, Ward placed a proposal before ICC seeking greater international uniformity in the regulations governing export commercial credits. That initiative helped set in motion the international work that led to the first Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits in 1933.
By the time Wilbert Ward published American Commercial Credits in 1922, he had already been involved in efforts to improve American commercial credit practice, having seen how the fall in commodity prices after the First World War exposed weaknesses that favourable markets had allowed to pass largely unnoticed. When buyers had commercial reasons to resist payment, transactions that had once appeared straightforward became disputed, giving uncertainty in the wording and operation of credits consequences that extended well beyond the drafting itself.
Reading about that period, we were struck by how familiar some of those difficulties remain, particularly when a credit crosses borders and its value depends on banks sharing a sufficiently consistent understanding of what it requires. A difference that seems minor during a discussion can take on quite another significance when it becomes the reason for withholding payment.
Ward's recognition that national arrangements could not adequately address an international problem helped bring the subject to ICC, where banking practice could develop through consultation across borders. Although he was an important pioneer and initiator, his contribution belongs within a collective effort that has continued through successive generations, as practitioners have brought their experience to bear on the difficulties encountered when applying the rules.
Having contributed to that continuing work over many years, we know how much sustained effort can lie behind wording that others may read in a matter of seconds. Our involvement has encompassed numerous versions of UCP work on Guidance Papers, Technical Advisory Briefings, eUCP, ISBP, ICC Opinions, and much more, through which we have had the opportunity to work with colleagues whose experience has helped us question our own assumptions and consider how a provision will operate beyond the circumstances immediately before us.
That experience has made us increasingly aware that the responsibility continues long after publication, as carefully considered provisions meet circumstances that those involved in drafting could not fully have anticipated. Much of the work has grown from the questions that follow, with discussions often returning to the documents themselves to establish whether a proposed interpretation is supported by what they actually show. Anyone who has taken part will recognise how a modest amendment to a sentence can emerge only after considerable debate about its implications.
It is through that continuing responsibility that we see a connection with the UCP/ISBP Action Plan, which asks where practitioners still encounter uncertainty and how the existing framework can help them reach better supported conclusions. The work on conflicting data is a good example, because deciding whether differences between documents justify refusal requires an understanding of how the relevant information relates within the presentation. Explaining that reasoning more clearly should help practitioners apply the provisions with greater consistency, giving trainers a firmer basis for helping others understand them.
Without presuming to know what Ward would have thought of individual proposals, we like to think he would have recognised the purpose behind this work, given that his own efforts arose from the need to make documentary credits more dependable in practice. Bringing practitioners together to examine recurring difficulties remains as worthwhile now as it was when international agreement was first taking shape.
As electronic records become more widely used and automated examination develops, that need for shared understanding will continue to shape the usefulness of the technology. Systems may retrieve guidance and compare information more quickly, but the conclusions they support will still depend on the quality of the interpretation behind them, including whether the reasoning properly reflects the documents under examination.
Receiving an award bearing Wilbert Ward's name therefore means a great deal to us, both as recognition of work to which we have been fortunate to contribute and as an opportunity to acknowledge the colleagues who have made that contribution possible.
We are grateful to the ICC and to everyone who has sent such generous messages, and hope that our continuing work will honour the effort behind the rules by helping the people who rely on documentary credits every day.
Dave / Gary