A new poll has found that understanding rules and regulations is the biggest ‘pain point’ for internationally trading businesses when it comes to customs.

The straw poll was conducted by the Institute of Export & International Trade (IOE&IT) at a free webinar on upcoming IT developments in UK customs.

Exactly half the attendees said navigating regulations was their main difficulty in customs, with a fifth saying bureaucracy and just over a tenth saying technology implementation.

The webinar was hosted in partnership with iCustoms - an AI trade compliance platform.

Pace of change

IOE&IT customs and trade specialist, Matt Vick, said he wasn’t surprised by the result when responding to the poll during the webinar.

He said the recent requirement for businesses to start using the Customs Declaration Service (CDS), instead of the previous Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system, for submitting import and export declarations was an example of a change in procedure that even experienced customs professionals were needing to grapple with.

“The pace of regulatory change over the last eight or so years has been much greater than in the 15 or so years beforehand.

“It’s been difficult even for industry veterans – for instance, people who could submit CHIEF entries in their sleep have had to learn and adapt to CDS.

“No matter how experienced you are, customs and trade as an industry is always changing and you have to adapt.”

Ongoing IT developments

The webinar included presentations from HMRC on some of the ongoing changes that are taking place in the UK’s customs IT infrastructure, including the ongoing migration to CDS, an upcoming update to the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) and the development of the new Single Trade Window programme.

Andrew Hutchinson, CDS exports migration command centre lead at HMRC, presented on the requirement for export declarations to now be submitted on CDS. He noted that, while the official deadline for this passed at the end of March, there is an ‘exceptions period’ running until 4 June.

A poll during the webinar found that almost a third (32%) of the delegates were already using CDS for export declarations ahead of 4 June, with a further 26% saying they were prepared to complete them by this time. Less than 2% said they were not prepared at all.

Lorna Taylor, senior project manager for business readiness at HMRC, prepared a presentation on the upcoming NCTS5 update for transit users.

Just under 40% of the attendees said they weren’t sure yet as to whether they were ready for this update, with just over a third (35%) saying they either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ ready.

The future of customs is nigh?

Mark Denney, an advisor for iCustoms and ex chief digital and information officer at HMRC, presented on the possible solutions that generative AI and machine learning could provide for customs professionals

He noted that machine learning could support with document extraction and processing, streamlining the current process of taking information from a commercial invoice and putting it into a customs declaration. It could also help with pre-filling customs entries based on previous entries.

He explained:

“These new tools can extract information from a scrappy invoice, dealing with quite unstructured data that isn’t laid out the same each time, and transpose this into a standard set of information that can then be submitted that into the declaration that’s submitted into CDS.

“This can save up to 90% of the time it takes to do that process currently.”

AI, meanwhile, could be used to prompt and suggest HS codes and relevant regulatory requirements and duties, as well as customer service queries, he said.

Single Trade Window

Denney also noted that the UK’s Single Trade Window – a new portal, currently in development, through which businesses will theoretically be able to provide data into government once for a goods movement – could further streamline customs processes for businesses.

“There’s a lot of duplication currently when you’re filling in various forms,” he said.

“When you’re doing a particular movement, you have to provide the same information multiple times. What we’re doing is we’re applying these tools to pre-populate as much as possible.

“It sounds minor, but it will save a substantial amount of time – potentially 70-80% of the time it takes to do a submission on the various systems that are required.”