One of the three recommendations resulting from the recent ICC consultation into a possible UCP revision advocated smarter usage of information in order to achieve greater awareness by practitioners. This will require a lot more effort in presenting, marketing and compliance of ICC rules and guidelines.
It is worth delving deeper into this issue in order to understand the implications.
In general, people like certainty and are risk/loss averse. It is essential to enforce the message that enhanced knowledge will guarantee improvements in process, ensure fewer mistakes, and improve budget / P&L.
The key lies in overcoming inertia, addressing practitioner concerns, and motivating the market to use training tools that are readily available. By focusing on what is needed by the market, significant advances could be achieved.
Delivery, pricing and distribution channels require change with material more focused on the problems that are being faced.
Smarter usage of information, using digital techniques, could significantly improve discrepancy rates whilst improving awareness and compliance.
It is definitely worthwhile for the ICC to consider releasing more focused guidance notes as they have done in the past with, for example, the ‘strict compliance' issue.