TFG heard from Joel Schrevens Global Solutions Director of China Systems about the state of the trade and supply chain finance ecosystem. Established in 1983, China Systems is a leading trade services solutions vendor. The company is fully focused on providing an integrated front-end and back-office platform catering for internal and external deployment at a domestic, regional or global level.

Existing systems are woefully inefficient, siloed or still paper-based and many of them have not improved for decades. The Marco Polo Network is working with Financial Institutions, Corporates and Technology & Service Providers to remove the barriers preventing them from operating at their best.

(Maldives, October 9th, 2019): The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), has signed a major US$1.5 billion framework agreement with the Republic of Maldives. The five-year framework agreement, signed by… read more →

TFG spoke to the author of ‘Digital Ecosystems within Trade Finance’, a BCG, SWIFT and ICC report on the state of networks and consortia, the key problem points within trade and trade finance, as well as the current barriers in terms of digitalisation both from a corporate and bank perspective. Deepesh spoke to Sukand Ramachandran at BCG about how global trade is changing and the role of digital ecosystems within this.

Singapore-based Finaxar, announces the partnership with Global eTrade Services (GeTs), a global trade platform company. Finaxar provides its unique Lending-as-a-Service to financial institutions, trade and e-commerce platforms using data-driven methods to provide the fast, tailored financing solutions for SMEs.

“Who trades what with whom?”. This is an inexcusable state of affairs in today’s world of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, as Dr Rebecca Harding, CEO of Coriolis Technologies, explains.

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.