UK exporters: Navigating volatility while seeking digitalisation at scale

The last five years have seen a global pandemic, tariff wars, a Suez Canal blockage, a Panama Canal drought, attacks on commercial shipping vessels, and, more recently, geopolitics taking an increasingly unpredictable shape.

Markets no longer simply react to specific crises or events. A level of structural uncertainty and volatility is baked into the global economy. This means that corporate resilience requires strategic planning that accounts for the constant unpredictability of markets, rather than merely responding to sporadic events. 

Tariffs have grown into a tool for negotiation, a leverage for non-trade-related issues. In this climate, diversification and reducing risk concentration are becoming necessities. 

It’s well understood that such volatility adversely impacts micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and Barclays research evidences the pattern that many assume to be true. In June 2025, only 4% of micro businesses in the UK reported that tariffs would have a net positive effect on trade, compared with 49% of large businesses. Similarly, only 2% responded that tariffs would have a net positive impact on supply chain stability, compared again with 49% of large businesses.

But nobody welcomes volatility. 26% of micro, 28% of small, 23% of medium-sized, and 28% of large businesses reported a net negative impact on customer demand from tariffs: a similar proportion, no matter the organisation size. 

As UK businesses remain focused on productivity, with a persistent intent to invest (only 9% of businesses expect to hold back on investment in the coming year), innovation to offset cost pressures becomes a more urgent priority.

The value of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI), which can enable the accurate mapping and modelling of market volatility, cannot be overstated. 

Changing trade corridors

Although remapping an entire supply chain or breaking into new markets can’t happen overnight, understanding the key trade corridors for your local market can ensure that you are prepared when crises strike. 

High-value corridors often arise in the consciousness of banks and governments in tandem. For instance, in April 2025, Barclays published a report titled ‘Batting for growth: The UK-India Economic Corridor,’ highlighting how India is a “major engine of global economic growth,” a goldmine of untapped opportunity that the UK can capitalise on. The UK and India then finalised their free trade deal in May 2025.

The UK has recently established another strategic alliance in its critical minerals partnership with Japan, a move that enables the UK to reduce its dependency on China. Bankers and governments can work together in determining which relationships take priority and will be most beneficial. 

Companies need to scope out which corridors, in what sectors, offer competitive advantages. Certain markets, such as Australia and New Zealand, have historically been undermined, but they could present a newfound stability for the UK and Europe, serving as a lower-risk option.

On the other hand, defence is a sector seeing increased spending. Companies looking to win contracts seek government backing, which requires pre-established risk mitigation techniques, determined through working with banks. 

If carried out effectively, the increased demand for defence could be beneficial for small businesses sitting at the lower tiers of the supply chain, turning geopolitical tension into opportunity. 

Governments leveraging digitalisation

Digitalisation continues to be central to discussions on volatility. According to the UK International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), switching to electronic documents could deliver £25 billion in economic growth and £224 billion in efficiency savings. But the real asset of digitalisation is creating a foundational layer of structured data, with its power being unlocked through emerging technologies like AI.  

Amassing structured data enhances supply chain predictability by enabling AI to identify patterns, trends, and insights. The greater the volume of data, the more accurately large language models (LLMs) can predict trends in weather patterns, shipping disruptions, liquidity needs, and market shifts.  

The adoption of digitalisation remains slow, including among electronic bills of lading (eBLs). A 2024 survey by the Future of International Trade Alliance reveals that Europe trailed Asia in adoption rates, with Asia at 60.2%, the Middle East at 50%, and Europe at 45%.

Alongside the transition costs, there is another key barrier to digital take-up. The UK can partner with a trade hub, such as the UAE, to share digitalised documents. However, much of the traffic that goes into the UAE or other hubs is transhipment trade, ultimately moving on to somewhere else. 

That means that UK corporations can digitalise documents until they reach the UAE, or similar destinations. However, they are then converted into paper documents, limiting the capability for UK banks and corporates to digitalise trade at scale.

In spite of the hurdles, the UK is a global heavy-lifter in digitalisation, passing the Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA) in 2023, which gave electronic documents the same legal status as physical documentation, making it the first country in the Group of Seven (G7) to remove legal barriers to trade digitalisation. The law has enabled the digitisation of 80% of bills of lading, 60% of global trade finance, and the majority of shipping, insurance and commodity trade. 

A crucial way to get other countries to digitalise at scale is for the UK government to partner with key corridor countries to help them adopt the same legal frameworks. 

The ICC’s roadmap for the digitalisation of UK trade encourages the government to push for legal alignment and interoperable data standards through multilateral networks, including the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the G7 and the Group of 20 (G20), and to use the ETDA as a legal framework. Centrally, the roadmap outlines the creation of “modern, digitalised trade corridors – ‘superhighways’”: removing trade barriers to enable e-transactions, while simultaneously encouraging other UK trading partners to implement their own ETDA legislation. 

Once countries adopt the same legal frameworks, digitalisation and scaling begin to be carried out, allowing banks to lead the digital take-up with government support. 

Building the architecture to tackle fraud

Fraud is another area where government support could transform the banking world, with successful examples already emerging from the Netherlands and India. In particular, information sharing can reduce fraud risk across entities; the key is to share data in an anonymised way to avoid compromising data privacy principles.

Recent progress has been achieved through federated learning, where AI models are trained locally, data and privacy requirements are enforced, and only then is the anonymised data centralised for several organisations to examine.

But India and the Netherlands have taken this further, establishing centralised registries of invoices that banks can rely on to check for emerging fraud and duplicate invoicing, and to track trends in fictitious invoicing. 

Creating that central data architecture repository and layering on alerts across the required government and banking entities can resolve many fraud risk themes. The use of government resources to create legal and data architecture to accelerate and protect the digital transition could be key to the UK’s role as a financial leader. 

As simple as simplification

Digitalisation could have another significant advantage over paper documentation: it can make trade more efficient. 

The amount of paperwork required, particularly for exporters, is vast, including rules of origin paperwork, customs declarations, sanctions legislation, tariffs, financial crime legislation, and rising insurance costs. This administrative burden tends to hit SMEs the hardest, as they lack the resources of larger companies, often excluding them from the international market.  

Digitalisation offers an opportunity for better guidance and simplification. Even outside of digitalisation, investment in simplifying requirements across borders can help reduce barriers to entry into the international trade market. 

According to a study by McKinsey, eBL implementation alone could unlock $30-40 billion in global trade growth by reducing trade friction, especially in emerging markets. In the UK, digitalisation could generate an estimated 35% efficiency gain for SMEs. The government also has a role to play, and should seek ways to simplify customs procedures at the border.

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Digitalisation at scale, especially in such an uncertain world, is not so simple. Trade finance connects the largest international financial firms with the smallest, local SMEs. Supply chains thread through ever more complex paths, bridging together multiple jurisdictions, nations, and cooperations. 

Moving towards digitalisation requires a shift across the entire supply chain. The UK has the opportunity to become a global leader in this transition. Public-private collaboration is the key to increasing efficiency, enhancing digitalisation, and providing structural stability in a volatile world.