By Brian Smith, Managing Director, essCert

Just when you thought the whole Brexit issue was going to finally wrap up, once again complications arise, as politicians and technocrats continue to do what they do best! [We are in no way venturing an opinion here about which politicians we like or don’t like; way too far outside our remit – Ed.]

We have witnessed plenty of pontification from ‘experts’ about what a hard or soft Brexit means, and what the Irish border will look like post-Brexit. This article will spare you from suffering additional wild guesses and speculation, seeing there is already way too much of that for us to want to add to the chaos. And since no one in official roles seems to know with full certainty what will happen, we are certainly not going to pretend to know.

What we do want to do is assure our clients (and future clients) that essCert is ready to deal with any outcome. Our users in the UK, the EU and the world over can rest assured that essCert definitely has you covered. We may not be able to eliminate the ongoing uncertainty or make things less confusing when (and how, or if!) the big day occurs, but we are ready for all eventualities.

essCert does business in the UK – a lot of if, in fact – and British companies will have plenty of things to worry about during the Brexit transition; essCert will not be one of those. 

And how, you may ask, can we be so certain?:

• Our Brexit transition team is in close contact with appropriate regulatory bodies
• Our development team has cleared its normal planning schedule around the (current) planned Brexit date, in the event we receive any regulatory surprises that require development work, so those changes, if any, can be made in an instant
• We have made significant investments in our IT infrastructure over the past year, to accommodate for any spikes in processing volumes or other issues. This investment was driven both by anticipation of Brexit outcome as well as our document processing volumes having more than doubled since expanding into new countries in Europe and beyond. There is some speculation (I know, I said I would avoid that, but will keep it at a minimum here!) that, post Brexit, UK exporters may need to issue more Certificates of Origin, perhaps a lot more. Our sophisticated cloud-based architecture via Amazon Web Services allows our environment to expand and scale as needed. So, if on the day after Brexit volumes from the UK double, our infrastructure will not be fazed by this
• As the world’s leading electronic Certificate of Origin service provider, we have a responsibility to hundreds of Chambers of Commerce across five continents, as well as over 38,000 exporter and forwarder companies (and hundreds of thousands of users). It is our duty to be prepared for any outcome
• Working round-the-clock is part of essCert’s DNA: being active across five continents (and countless timezones) our tech support team is available 24/7/365 by phone, email or in-app 

While we cannot help you with the legalities and unknowns of Brexit, we can certainly make sure the Certificate of Origin wheels continue to turn smoothly. One less thing to be concerned about in these very interesting times!