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 in Bristol. Please click here to register at your earliest. The conference programme is continuously being updated – click here to view the programme.

The world’s most important number: LIBOR transition for trade finance

Deepesh Patel, Trade Finance Global (TFG) interviews Alastair Hughes, Bank of England and Usman Butt, HSBC to discuss LIBOR transition. The session will be held on Friday 8th October at 10:45am and will include a Q&A.

With just a few months until the cessation of many LIBORs, understanding the hurdles to the transition within the cash and trade finance markets has too often been left on the back-burner. Underpinning some $300 trillion of financial contracts worldwide, LIBOR is currently used across loan, mortgage, and derivatives markets, and transitioning from the world’s most important number is a challenge. Transitioning from a universal forward-looking term rate to risk-free rates (RFRs) compounded in arrears has left questions for the trade finance community (which represents just a fraction of the total market linked to LIBOR). Yet there are a myriad of LIBOR-linked exposures across trade, payments, pre-export and ECA finance.

This session will give a high level overview of the LIBOR reform, before deep diving into some of the nuances and issues around alternative RFRs for trade finance, the need to transition to an appropriate RFR, and recommendations for trade finance participants (including banks, non-banks, funds, multilaterals, corporates).

– A helicopter view of the LIBOR reform, from contracts to financial models and metrics – who, what, where, why, when
– A sterling and dollar and multi-currency view of the transition
– Practical consequences for trade finance – existing and new loans
– Clarity over a forward looking term SOFR and SONIA
– Other implications for the trade and export finance community.

Alastair Hughes:  
Head of Division, Bank of England – Markets Directorate

Alastair Hughes is Head of Division in the Bank of England’s Markets Directorate, responsible for work on risk-free rate transition. Prior to this he spent most of his career as a supervisor of Globally Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs). Most recently as a Head of Division in the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) covering the London operations of North American firms including JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America. He spent several years as a member of the FSB’s Senior Supervisor Group, a forum for senior representatives of supervisory authorities to engage in dialogue on risk management practices, governance, and other issues concerning complex, globally-active financial institutions.

Usman Butt:  
Senior Product Manager, HSBC

Usman joined HSBC in July 2017 as European Product Head for Supply Chain Finance and Digital Trade before moving into a Global Product role in 2019 being part of bank’s LIBOR transition project representing Global Trade and Receivables Finance as well as other Digital Trade Transformation projects.

Prior to joining HSBC, Usman has trade finance work experience across the UK, Asia and the Middle East in sales, relationship management and product roles in regional and international banks. 

Usman has recently represented HSBC in industry bodies and working groups like ICC Banking Commission’s Working groups on IBOR Transition and on Trade Digitalization as well as consortia / industry working groups involved in product innovation and development of rules for new digital trade ecosystems.   

Deepesh Patel:  
Editor, Trade Finance Global