One of the UK’s Top 5 Business Schools has recently joined forces with ITFA – International Trade and Forfaiting Associations. Founded in 1999, the ITFA works in cooperation with their members – many financial institutions – to try and mitigate the risks associated with their international trade in creative and efficient ways.
Cass Business School, one of Europe’s leading business schools has welcomed this partnership, and now includes a Trade Finance specific course. Cass – one of City, University of London’s 5 schools already has a global reputation for an in-depth approach of teaching that includes both practical and theoretical work from undergraduate right the way through to PhD and executive programmes.
This course being the result of a partnership between Cass school and ITFA is a strong step toward better educating the industry players of tomorrow.
The Course Itself
The aforementioned course that is being held by different well-experienced ITFA board members or special guests selected by ITFA. Starting on the 6th June and running through until the 27th, the new six-lecture course will include information on topics such as Structured commodity finance, Letters of Credit, and Risk distributions.
Below is an outline for the structure of said lectures:
Day 1 – Thursday 6th June 2019:
- Held by Duarte Pedreira – ITFA Board Member & Head of Trade Finance – Crown Agents Bank and Farah Shaikh, Fintech Community member & Head of Trade – Crown Agents Bank.
- Duarte will start the course off, with a deep-dive into some of the more basic trade finance tools, such as Letters of Credit.
- This will be followed up by Farah, who will explore Bank Guarantees in greater details.
Day 2 – Tuesday 11th June 2019:
- Held by Duarte Pedreira
- Duarte will give brief explorations and explanations of other simple Trade Instruments such as Export Factoring and Forfaiting,
- Following this, Duarte will also expose the students to The Power of Structuring, alongside it’s limitations.
Day 3 – Thursday 13th June 2019
- Held by Duarte Pedreira and Simon Cook (ITFA member & Partner – Sullivan Law.).
- Duarte will then go into Structured Trade and Commodity finance Techniques
- In the second part, Simon will teach the students ways they can take security and some other related principles in trade finance transactions
Day 4 – Monday 17th June
- Held by Sean Edwards (ITFA Member & Special Adviser – Sumitomo Mitsui) and Chris hall (ITFA member & Senior Underwriter – Liberty Special Markets)
- Sean will deliver a talk on Supply Chain Finance
- Chris will explain Forfaiting and it’s benefits and shortfalls.
Day 5 – Tuesday 25th June, 2019.
- Held by Zeyno Davutoglu (ITFA member & Head of Financial Institutions & forfaiting – Credit Europe Bank).
- Carol Searle, ITFA Committee member & General Counsel – Texel Finance)
- Zeyno will be conducting the first part of the lecture around the topic of Trade finance risk, and how one distributes/ mitigates said risk.
- Carol on the other hand however, will discuss in depth the landscape of credit and political risk insurance.
Day 6 – Thursday 27th June, 2019.
- Held by Andre Casterman, ITFA Board member & CMO – INTIX)
- ITFA Young Professionals
- Andre will hold a rather interesting lecture based around the topic of current and past trends in Trade Finance, including specific focus on aspects such as Fintech and a rise in alternative financing.
- The ITFA Young professionals will also be conducting the second part of this day’s lectures with a talk on careers within the Trade Finance industry.
Youth of Today, Financiers of Tomorrow
ITFA has made it very clear, they wish to be a part of the shaping of tomorrow’s trade financers. By offering such an in-depth, detail oriented course which is given by some extremely knowledgeable and experienced trade finance players.
The above course will only have 25 seats available, however if you take a quick glance at the curriculum, one will understand the magnitude and depth of what one would be learning. A class of no more than 25 allows adequate questions to be asked, and also ensures each student receives equal, significant 1-1 time whether that be asking questions or being walked through a certain topic.
Following the course’s six lectures (as laid out above), the 25 students will each face a written group assessment, allowing them to put their newfound knowledge into practise and test their new understandings.
Limited number of seats or not, the course will gift substantial knowledge to the students on all aspects regarding trade finance. With this knowledge, the ITFA wishes they go on to successful careers and continue to educate the market themselves.
