Operational guidance for document clerk: review documents from bank and prepare export documents 2

-

Section 2. Standards and standards for bank documents review

1. Review the integrity of documents

The so-called integrity of documents Safety means that when banks sign for and review export documents, they should carefully check whether the type and number of documents submitted by the export company are complete. Although Article 16 of "UCP500" stipulates: "The Bank shall not be responsible for the consequences of delay/or loss in the transmission of any message, letter or document, or for the delay, mutilation or other errors in the transmission of any telecommunications. "Responsible." However, if the bank fails to check the documents submitted by the company clearly, or even misses one of the documents when sending it abroad, it will cause trouble and cause the other bank to refuse payment. In practice, there have been cases where payment was refused due to omission of certain documents (such as money orders or beneficiary certificates or express mail receipts, etc.), so this should not be taken lightly.

2. Review the consistency of documents

The so-called consistency of documents refers to "the documents are consistent and the documents are consistent." According to Article 13A of UCP500, “The bank must review all documents specified in the letter of credit with reasonable care to determine whether they appear to be consistent with the terms of the letter of credit. The international banking practice reflected in this practice is to determine whether the documents specified in the letter of credit are consistent with the terms of the letter of credit.” The basis for the document to be consistent with the terms of the letter of credit. If the documents are inconsistent with each other, they are deemed to be inconsistent with the terms of the letter of credit." What does "document consistency" mean? For a long time, there have been two international standards or standards for this: one is the principle of "strict consistency", which is like the reflection in a mirror, it is exactly the same without any deviation (not even spelling errors); the second is the principle of "substantial consistency", Some minor differences are allowed as long as they do not cause harm to the applicant. The International Chamber of Commerce is critical of these two standards, or both document review standards, so it said in the "511" document: "Experienced bank personnel know that the documents are consistent with the actual situation letter by letter. It is impossible. Some courts insist that strict consistency and reasonable care are "mirror reflections", which is not a practical standard for reviewing cases; other courts believe that strict consistency should allow some differences, as long as they do not cause any harm to the applicant. It only needs to harm or not violate the court’s own concepts of ‘reasonableness’, ‘balance’ and ‘good faith’, which is also not a practical standard for reviewing orders.” It can be understood from this that "the documents are consistent" is neither "mirror reflection", a mechanical dogma, nor "approximately equal", which is far-fetched, but should be somewhere in between. In practice, banks generally believe that all records on the surface of the document must be strictly consistent with the terms of the letter of credit, and the records of the same matter must be strictly consistent between documents. For example, if the letter of credit stipulates that a Type A certificate of origin be submitted, but an ordinary certificate of origin is actually submitted, or the bill of lading shows that the goods are transported by car and ship, but the invoice only shows that the goods are transported by ship, this constitutes a discrepancy. However, it cannot be copied mechanically. For example, if the letter of credit stipulates "SHIPMENT FROM CHINESE PORT TO MOJI PORT" (shipping from China Port to Moji Port), the document should be required to specifically indicate the port of shipment (if shipping from Beihai, use "BEIHAI" instead "CHINESE PORT"), do not copy "CHINESE PORT" mechanically to avoid misunderstandings or jokes. In practice, it often happens that payment is refused due to the wrong delivery of a certain document or the mistyping of a certain word. Even if the payment can be recovered in the end, fees or costs such as telegraph (or telex) fees, "discrepancy fees" and interest will still be paid. It can be seen that "the documents are consistent", which seems simple, but is actually not easy. "A slight difference can lead to a loss of thousands of miles." Therefore, in order to ensure "document consistency", it is necessary to strictly control the documents.