Announcing the conference speakers, Bristol 2021 – 6-8 October

Join the ITFA Board at this year’s edition of the Annual Conference being held between 6-8 October. Please click here to register at your earliest. The conference programme is continuously being updated – click here to view the programme. 

Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman and Andrew Raymond, Bolero will hold a bi-lateral discussion on the title of ”Battle of the (e) bills of lading: the most important digital trade document?”

Bills of lading are critical to both physical trade and trade finance. As a result, they are amongst the most important trade documents in line for digitisation under the new laws that the industry has been so hard towards. But systems for providing non-physical bills of lading have already been in existence for more than a decade. Legal change and new technology appear to provide an opportunity for a revolution in the way we create and use these instruments. What form will this take and are there competing views? What should vendors be offering the market and how can banks make the best use of the new opportunities? Will the benefits be limited to cost-savings and efficiency or is this the moment to re-engineer financial products in depth? This session will draw on the views and vision of the CEO of one of the leading e-bill of lading providers.

Sean Edwards is Head of Legal at SMBC Bank International plc, part of the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. He is a Special Adviser to the Trade Finance Department of the bank and in the Trade Innovation Unit.

Sean is Chairman of the International Trade & Forfaiting Association (ITFA). 

He helped draft the Uniform Rules for Forfaiting (URF) and the Standard Definitions for Techniques of Supply Chain Finance published by ITFA, ICC, FCI, BAFT and the EBA. He is a former member of the Executive Committee of the ICC Banking Commission and the ICC Working Group on Digitalisation in Trade Finance. Sean is a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade Finance Expert Group. He is a non-executive director of KomGo S.A.

Sean has written for all the major trade finance magazines and is on the editorial board of Global Trade Review (GTR). He has presented at many conferences.

Andrew was appointed CEO of Bolero International in March 2019 after joining the business in September 2017 as the Global Head of Sales.  Andrew’s mission at Bolero has been to bring to market new and innovative solutions which leverage Bolero’s capabilities and address current and emerging market opportunities and technologies.

Andrew has more than 20 years of global sales and client management experience with leading solution providers such as FIS / SunGard, Algorithmics and SmartStream, and has a background of innovation and client delivery in transaction banking and capital markets.

We look forward to this interesting session in Bristol!