Announcing the conference speakers, Bristol 2021

The ITFA board is pleased to announce one of the panel sessions taking place on Thursday 7th October at 12:30pm in Bristol. We urge you to register at the earliest to avoid disappointment. The panel titled: The emergence of trade finance funds – scope for greater impact investment, will be moderated by Clarissa Dann of Deutsche Bank. The panelists include: Alastair Sewell – Fitch Ratings, Bart Ras – Pemberton Asset Management, Mike McGill – Allianz GI and Suresh Hegde – NN Investment Partners.

Trade finance as an asset class is increasingly catching the eye of portfolio managers, thanks to its attractive yield premium and short-term characteristics. However, the assets need to be packaged into a structure that makes them investible – these are not bonds or loans.

For insurance companies, pension funds, corporate treasurers, this is a new asset class and some education needed. With corporates looking for safe places to put their pockets of liquidity, trade finance assets seem an ideal solution with potential to balance yield and liquidity.

But why is there such a shortage of investible assets to choose from, and what needs to be done to help investors understand its benefits? In addition, what is the investment call to banks considering how to transfer risk from their lending portfolios to something a non-bank investor can understand and engage with? How could new rating methodologies smooth the path and is a new taxonomy needed to create a common understanding of the assets?

We hear from three very different representatives from the investor community, and the ratings agency perspective.

Bart Ras is a Managing Director in Working Capital Finance at Pemberton. He is responsible for solving clients’ most pressing issues related to the financial flows in supply chains.

Prior to joining Pemberton in 2021, Bart held senior positions at Greensill Capital, HSBC London, Citibank, Philips NV and ING Bank. He has over 10 years’ experience in Supply Chain Finance and was Head of Business Development for HSBC Global Trade and Receivable Finance in 2013 and 2016.

Bart has been a research fellow (part-time) since 2017 at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands.

Mike McGill is a portfolio manager for trade finance strategies within Allianz Global Investors’ alternative asset management team. Before joining AllianzGI, Mike was part of the Structured Solutions team within Standard Chartered’s Trade Finance business. Prior to this, Mike has worked at Lloyds Bank and HSBC, in trade and commodity finance roles in both London and New York. Mike graduated from the Stern School of Business at NYU with a BSc in Finance, and later earned an MSc in Global Politics and International Political Economy (Distinction) from Birkbeck, University of London.

Suresh is Head of Structured Private Debt at NN Investment Partners where he leads a team of portfolio managers focussed on developing and managing innovative investment strategies in asset-based lending. The team has been active on behalf of its institutional clients in Export Finance for over 10 years, and now also runs a number of separate strategies within Trade Finance. These include both receivable finance and structured commodity finance investment funds. Previously Suresh held credit structuring roles in London at JP Morgan and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, having begun his career at Linklaters and subsequently spent time as a structured finance credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s. He has a BSc in Political Science from The University of Bristol, and now lives in Amsterdam with his family.

Clarissa Dann is Editorial Director of Marketing at Deutsche Bank Corporate Bank where she leads the Bank’s content strategy across its Trade Finance, Cash Management, Securities Services, Trust and Agency Services businesses via the db.com/flow portal and app. She presents Trade Finance TV, a broadcast channel launched in 2019 supported by Deutsche Bank’s flow, and has moderated financial services panels for SWIFT and the ICC Banking Commission.

Before joining Deutsche Bank in 2017 Clarissa was Editor-in-Chief at the former Trade & Forfaiting Review, a role she took up after a career in legal and regulatory publishing at Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis. Clarissa holds an MBA from Cass Business School in London.

We do hope many of you will join us!