Check logic: TradeSpeed's reasoning behind every check result
- Aisling Mullins
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Trade finance decisions should never be a black box. This is why every check TradeSpeed runs exposes its underlying reasoning, step by step, in plain language.
By Aisling Mullins, Chief Product Officer, Complidata
Great document examiners are sceptical by nature. That is good. They ought to be. Assuming they will take any decision from our AI at face value is a fool's errand. Unsurprisingly, a recurrent objection we hear from them before they start using TradeSpeed arrives in some version of this: "If I cannot explain the logic of an automated system, I cannot be sure it is compliant, and therefore, I cannot trust it."
And while this can sometimes be misread as resistance to technology, it is really a natural response to where accountability actually sits. When a presentation is refused, it is the examiner's name against that decision, not the vendor's. A system that hands over a result without showing how it got there is asking an examiner to underwrite something they cannot inspect, and risking their name on it.
This month we are putting the spotlight on the part of TradeSpeed built to answer that objection and build trust with trade finance teams and document examiners. We call it check logic, and it sits under every check the platform runs.
Machine logic, human judgement
We have written before about our check development process and the technology that sits underneath it, and about how much experience and judgement goes into each of TradeSpeed's checks.
However, telling you how something is built is one thing. Showing you how it works is another. This "showing part" is what check logic does, and why document examiners find it so useful.
Let's start with something every examiner has done by hand. To decide whether a credit states the trade terms, you work through it in a sequence. Is field 45A present at all? If it is not, the question ends there. If it is, you read what it holds, and you decide whether what it holds amounts to trade terms. Two steps, in order, in which the second one only takes place because the first came back as a "yes".
That sequence is what a check is. A chain of small judgements, each one conditional on the last, rather than a single verdict arrived at somehow. TradeSpeed works the same chain, and check logic is the record of it, written down link by link as it goes:
Step 1. TradeSpeed checks whether field 45A of the credit is present. Field 45A was present. Therefore TradeSpeed proceeds to the next step.
Step 2. TradeSpeed checks whether field 45A indicates the trade terms. Field 45A indicated the trade terms as CFR MANGALORE PORT INDIA INCOTERMS 2020. Therefore this check rule has been marked as OK.
And this is just a simple two-step check. Some of these logic chains run to seven, eight or even nine (!) steps before they resolve.
How deep a check runs is set dynamically and responds to the presentation in front of it. Where container numbers appear on the bill of lading and nowhere else, a container number consistency check resolves in a step or two. Where those same numbers also turn up on non-transport documents, the packing list say, the check extends to reconcile each of them. Same rule, more steps, because there is more to reconcile.
Additionally, checks multiply as well as deepen. Asking whether the applicant and beneficiary addresses are acceptable is really asking three separate things: that neither address is only a registered agent's or care of address, that both are complete, and that the two are different from one another. Each of those runs as its own rule with its own steps. So when something comes back not okay, the examiner sees which rule gave way and at which step, instead of a failed address check with nothing attached to it.
But it is the failing case where this matters most. When a rule about fields 46A and 47A comes back as "not okay", the record does not simply report that the credit carries a problematic condition. It reproduces the clause it found, in full, in the issuing bank's own wording, at the step where it became decisive.
This is what we mean by opening the lid on the black box: a record an examiner can read in the same terms they would have used themselves, check against the credit in front of them, and disagree with where they see fit. Their own mental process, mapped and automated into a platform built around the way they already work.
A bridge between senior knowledge and junior learning
What about the junior examiners who are still building their judgement? This is where a second-order benefit of check logic comes into play.
Plenty of examiners were taught the rules from training slides rather than from the actual texts. Not everyone on an operations floor has their own copy of UCP 600, and fewer still have ISBP within arm's reach when a question arises. The expertise that was once built through years of sitting beside someone who already had it is gradually disappearing.
Whether because of a retiring workforce, pressure to deliver faster, or simply a lack of knowledge transfer programmes, that apprenticeship is something most teams no longer have the luxury of running.
TradeSpeed and the check logic feature can help with this. A junior examiner working a queue with check logic open is not simply collecting answers. They are watching the procedure, repeatedly, against live documents, laid out in the order a senior colleague would have worked through it. Over a few hundred presentations that is a great deal of structured instruction, delivered at the moment of use on real transactions rather than worked examples.
That is what we mean by AI supporting a team: the reasoning becomes visible enough to learn from. Growing your team's expertise and output at the same time.
See it on a real presentation
Writing about a transparency feature has an obvious flaw, which is that you are being asked to take our word for it. So we would rather show you. Book a walkthrough, and we will open a live presentation, run the checks, and let you pick any result on the screen and ask it to account for itself.
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 | Aisling Mullins Chief Product Officer Ais is a seasoned product leader with a strong background in trade finance and technology. She has more than a decade of experience in FinTech and has held roles at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Ireland and most recently served as CPO at MonetaGo before joining Complidata. |
