CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman / Head of Legal and Special Adviser to The Global Trade Finance Department At SMBC, July 2021

Dear Members and Friends,

I welcome you to this month’s edition of the ITFA newsletter with lots more enthusiasm and energy, and dare I say…….it’s coming home!!!!

You might think….did Sean write this introduction prior to the EURO 2020 final match?  In fact I wrote it the week after.  Whilst, like many other Brits, I was disappointed by the final result of the match, I find solace in the fact that, after so many struggles, we will be hosting the Annual Conference, and as announced last week, we have chosen Bristol in the west of England as our venue.

Registration is now open so may I kindly invite you to visit the conference website and register now so you can benefit from Early Bird prices.

Similar to previous years, an exciting programme has been prepared, with speakers to be announced as we go along. 

We have a small number of Sponsorship Opportunities left, so if interested I urge you to contact us at your earliest by sending us an email on info@itfa.org

As I am sure you are also aware, next month we will be hosting our very first live event since the start of the pandemic, also here in the UK.  The topic we have chosen is Liquidity Management: How is Trade Finance helping?  To this effect we will have 3 panel discussions.  As is customary of our events, we will close the event with networking drinks – remember those?  More information as well as how to register can be found here. May I also take the opportunity to remind you that this event is free for ITFA members.

In the July edition of the ITFA Newsletter, Andre Casterman provides a brief on the ‘TFD Initiative: a Texel sponsored panel on digitising credit insurance flow’. ITFA’s GRC committee helps by organising a webinar with concrete steps on the ESG roadmap – the article summarises the discussion held on 18^th June 2021. We have an update on ADGM and ITFA, as they partner to boost the impact of tradetech. And finally, an ITFA brief, with details about our two upcoming physical events.

ITFA is proud to welcome the following new members to ITFA: Allen & Overy LLP, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) Pte Ltd, and Orbian Management Ltd.

We look forward to hearing from you with any feedback you may want to share with us by sending an email to myself, any of the Board Members or to our general email, info@itfa.org.  

Best wishes

Sean Edwards