ITFA Webinar Briefs – June 2020

The ITFA Board through the support of regions and functions has organised a number of webinars for its members. Below is a brief on the webinars organised during the month of June:

Wednesday 03^rd June – ITFA / EY Webinar
ITFA Chairman, Sean Edwards, in association with Ernst & Young engaged in interesting conversation with two global heads of trade, Daniel Schmand of Deutsche Bank and James Binns of Barclays, to discuss their insights and gather some of their wisdom on how trade and trade finance will be defined by the impact of Covid-19 for the foreseeable future. Two further panels were moderated by EY and looked at international supply chains and next steps for trade finance. The joint ITFA/EY webinar was a great success, attracting close to 8,000 participants.

Tuesday 09^th June – ITFA Americas webinar: Multilaterals in the time of Corona virus
This virtual gathering which was hosted by ITFA and FIBA, saw senior representatives with deep experience with multilaterals active in Latin America discuss how public sector institutions are reacting to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, what programs have been instituted to assist countries to mitigate the damaging health, social and economic impacts, how different stakeholders are responding, and the longer-term impacts on the region. This webinar proved to be very meaningful and insightful for all those who joined.

Friday 12^th June – third ITFA Insurance Committee webinar – Synthetic Securitization
The third Insurance Webinar tackled another interesting field of cooperation between banks and insurance companies: Synthetic Securitization. During the webinar, three of our experts explained how Synthetic Securitizations works, what needs to be taken into account in order to obtain capital relief and why this is another field where banks and insurance companies are the perfect match. The Q&A session that followed, was also extremely interesting and valuable.

The Insurance Committee is organising fortnightly educational webinars so watch this space for more information.

Friday 19^th June – ITFA GRC webinar – E-signatures
Organised by the ITFA German regional committee, this insightful webinar tackled various aspects of e-signatures; how to approach the introduction of eSignatures for external use, the legal framework – UK law and German law, current ITFA initiatives on eSignatures and finally a fruitful Q&A session.

Tuesday 23rd June – TFD Initiative webinar
In April 2020, the Singapore Management University (SMU) and Tradeteq embarked on a project entitled “Exploring the Advantages of a Quantum System for Machine Learning applied to Credit Scoring” which aims to develop quantum-computing based credit scoring methods for companies.

This ITFA TFD Initiative webinar dealt with the evolution of credit scoring using quantum computing. The session outlined how new technologies further increase risk transparency in support of SME financing.

Tuesday 30^th June – DNI Initiative webinar
Following the launch of the DNI Initiative and the recent set-up of the Technology Experts for Regulatory Action (TERA), the ITFA Fintech Committee organised an educational webinar which took place on Tuesday 30 June.

The fruitful webinar provided further insights on the required policy changes for negotiable instruments to move digital, and on the recent actions initiated by banks around the world. Leading fintechs and banks discussed the benefits which they wish to extend to their clients too.

Tuesday 30^th June – Africa Regional Committee webinar
This was the very first webinar organised by the ITFA African regional committee. The webinar successfully addressed the impact of COVID and inherent challenges and opportunities for trade finance in Africa. Topics discussed included DFIs and support for African trade in a COVID environment. Following this, a panel discussion ensued – enabling trade finance in Africa – a new reality.

The recording of our webinars can be found in the member area of the ITFA website – please click here.

Kindly view our website to learn about our weekly webinars! More to follow in the month of July! The ITFA webinar series strive to keep both our members abreast of the most relevant topics affecting our industry in such critical and challenging times.