• TPM24
  • March 3-6, 2024 | Long Beach Convention Center

Bertrand Chen

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN)

CEO

Bertrand Chen is the CEO of Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), an independent, not-for-profit technology consortium to reimagine global trade. Bertrand oversees the consortium’s overall strategy, with a mandate to serve the best interests of the industry at large and is not influenced by any agenda and tradition.

Bertrand is passionate about unlocking business value in traditional businesses through digital transformation and data science. Prior to his role at GSBN, Bertrand served as the Group Data Scientist at CK Hutchison Holdings, a conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong with global business interests spanning various sectors.

Prior to this, Bertrand spent a decade on Wall Street as a trader in credit and equity derivatives for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch in New York City and in Hong Kong. Today he brings this experience to breakdown silos between the global supply chain and the financial system which underpins it. 

Sessions With Bertrand Chen

Tuesday, 28 February

  • 04:00pm - 04:45pm (PST) / 01/mar/2023 12:00 am - 01/mar/2023 12:45 am

    The eBL Inflection Point

    An electronic bill of lading sounds like such a reasonable and practical idea that it's difficult to understand why there has been so little adoption of them. The world has dispensed with paper versions of documents in dozens of high-values, high-importance scenarios, including bidding on houses. Yet eBLs account for only a tiny percentage of overall bills of lading each year. The barriers to adoption actually are numerous: no single eBL product; diverse pilots involving different container lines; unique banking regulations in each country touching international shipments; and a lack of priority among shippers to force service providers to change. In 2022, however, some strides were made that might end up being seen as a true fork in the road. The Digital Container Shipping Association convened numerous eBL software vendors in a pilot that seeks to create interoperability among the various products. This is key because shippers don't want to be forced into several eBL formats depending on the shipping lines they use. And progress has come in terms of making banks more comfortable with the creation and transfer of eBLs. This session will dig into where the industry is, how vendors that are competitive with each other can work together to drive adoption of eBLs, and the role shippers can play in driving broader use of eBLs.

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