Over the past 2-3 decades there have been many attempts to digitise parts of the trade and trade finance process, but it’s the complexity of trade that remains the challenge. Most successful attempts at digitisation have had to bite off a small piece of the problem and this has led to silos or what I call a ‘digital island’ phenomena.

In 2012, Asian Development Bank’s Trade Finance Program (TFP) commissioned a unique study, the first of its kind, to understand and quantify the unmet demand for trade finance, known as the global trade finance gap. Over the years, TFP has updated this study to quantify and inform policymakers and market participants about the main drivers for this persistent trade finance gap.

All global industries require standards. Remember what a huge step forward it was when the carrier industry agreed on the design for a shipping container. The same is true for electronic trade documents and their supporting systems.

Islamic finance is a specialist area that presents exciting growth opportunities for the UK. Sharia (Islamic law) compliant banking assets make up 6% of the world’s banking assets, but globally, approximately one in four people are Muslim. The scope for growth is obvious.

Deutsche Bank has released a comprehensive new publication, “Payables finance: A guide to working capital optimisation, 2nd edition”, revising and updating the original paper released almost two years ago at the beginning of 2018. The paper continues the ongoing work of defining and codifying the payables finance industry as it evolves, shifting priorities and practices in the process.

It’s TFG’s first ever Podcast Takeover, and we welcomed Michael Bickers, Editorial Director of BCR Publishing, who Trade Finance Global have partnered with for the BCR Supply Chain Finance Summit APAC on the 15th and 16th of October in Singapore.

TFG heard from David Morrish and Charles Woodgate from the London Institute of Banking and Finance, ahead of their annual conference, the World Conference for Banking Institutes (WCBI). Given times of unprecedented change within global trade, we discuss what this means for trade related education, as well as the current diversity and gender challenges within trade.

IBM has partnered with Chainyard to launch a new blockchain network geared towards improving supplier qualification, validation, onboarding, and information management.

In this interview series, we heard from 3 Supply Chain Finance experts and learned about the developments in the sector and the best of practices SCF implementation. TFG’s Persiana Ignatova spoke to Igor Zacks, Erick Riddle and Andrew Tananbaum, who are members of World of Open Account (WOA).

Letters of Credit are an involved subject. Bankers spend lots of time studying the various types and rules and regulations. “But hold on” I hear you say. I thought this article was entitled ‘Demystified.’ Well, for the typical importer or exporter dealing in individual transactions, they can be quite straightforward.