Manufacturers Bank.

• Position: Markets Wintrade - Brief Article

Manufacturers Bank of Los Angeles is marketing Wintrade [TM], a front-end software product for electronic letters of credit (LOCs) that will allow bank customers to submit applications and receive notices for letters of credit on their computers. Until its launch late in 2000, all LOC-related documents at the bank had been handled manually.

The bank installs the software, developed by Morgan Laboratories of San Francisco -- the same company that makes the bank's trade finance software -- on customers' computers. Currently, only customers with high international LOC volumes are being offered the product, says Jenny Wu, senior vice president of international services.

Wintrade eliminates a need to manually re-key information on applications by automatically entering the information into both the bank's and the customer's databases. When the application is approved by...