CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman, March 2024

Dear Members and Friends, 

Welcome to this month’s newsletter.

I stepped in recently to replace a wounded colleague (speedy recovery, Gary B!) at a Sanctions Masterclass held by our partners ICC UK. My slightly cynical take on the subject certainly got some laughs but there are some deep conundrums here to which there are no easy answers (other than the naturally British reaction to deploy humour). There is however, plenty of help as in many other areas in trade finance where we face challenges. At ITFA, our purpose has always been to help inform, educate and bring together our membership. One of our biggest opportunities to do this is our annual conference which this year marks its 50th edition. We are set to descend on Limassol, Cyprus from September 4^th to September 6^thand are excited to host you at the 5* Parklane Resort & Spa Limassol. We launched earlier this month, hence we encourage you to register now to take advantage of our special Early Bird prices, which expire at the end of May. You can register by clicking here.

Over two and a half days, you can expect engaging panel discussions, meetings, and ample networking opportunities, along with a touch of entertainment. Our dedicated networking sessions will once again offer participants the luxury of a specially designated networking space available throughout the conference. For more information, I invite you to click here or reach out to us at info@itfa.org for further details.

May I extend my heartfelt thanks to our sponsors for their generous support and delighted to report an increase in sponsor numbers this year, a true testament to the growing belief in the ITFA ‘brand’! You can view our latest sponsorship brochure here or send us an email to info@itfa.org if you require any further information.

Now onto recent events. As mentioned in our February newsletter we have once again partnered with GTR in Cape Town, where Lorna Pillow, Duarte Pedreira and I had the pleasure of presenting as part of the educational workshop hosted by Investec and speaking at the conference itself.

Additionally, March saw us hosting several other events across various locations. 

We made our debut in Toronto as our Americas Regional Committee organised an educational event. We also made stops in Houston (our first Rodeo!), Zurich and London where we gathered to share knowledge. Addressing the important topic of ESG, through a well-attended webinar, Dr Rebecca Harding and Kevin Bourne, explored standards ways to simplify ESG reporting processes.

Please keep following us on social media or visit our events calendar by clicking here. A good number of events are already lined up for the month of April.

In this March edition of the ITFA Newsletter we look firstly into the background to our ESG webinar before turning to some of our important recent advocacy work on the recognition of CRI under the new Basel rules, where we met with the EBA in the next stage of our ongoing work following the amendment we secured to the draft EU Basel rules. We have also been closely pressing the EU Parliament on changes to the replacement for the Late Payment Directive which, if enacted in its original form, will be very unfavourable to Supply Chain Finance.  We are also pleased to republish an S&P paper on deceptive shipping practices, a subject which much occupied the Masterclass audience mentioned above. Happy reading!

Lastly, we are proud to welcome the following new members to ITFA: Banco de Reservas, PrimeRevenue, QBE European Operations, Secro, Sparkasse Pforzheim Calw and Türkiye Vakiflar Bankasi T.A.O.

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.

Kind regards,

Sean Edwards