To advance trade finance’s digital transformation, financial institutions and technology providers alike are ramping up efforts to cooperate through a number of consortiums. But, to ensure these various initiatives do not create a cluster of “digital islands”, a more joined-up approach is required.

“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.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has been around for several years and has its roots in the world of cryptocurrencies, often referred to as Blockchain. Having brought some very interesting opportunities to the Banking market, attention was sparked in other industries such as Insurance, Healthcare, Shipping, Supply Chains, Manufacturing and Trade Finance.

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.

Despite today’s climate of rising trade tariffs and falling trade volumes, UniCredit’s Global Head of Global Transaction Banking, Luca Corsini, claims we have reason to remain optimistic for trade finance revenues in the coming months, pointing to the rising need for security in trade transactions, the rise of digital platforms to simplify and expand service provision, and continued infrastructure development stemming from Asia

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.

TFG heard from Accenture’s Cecile Andre Leruste, on the major digitisation initiatives within the commodiy finance space. Commodity finance is in a phase of major transition, driven by multiple megatrends

So you’ve built yourself a blockchain, now what are you supposed to do with it?

In today’s geopolitical climate many foreign policy makers use sanctions or similar, steps such as the refusals to grant authorisations, to place economic pressure on governments, organisations and individuals.