Announcing the conference speakers, Scott Ettien and Hannah Fearn, 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. Click here to view the conference programme. 

Scott Ettien, Willis Towers Watson and Hannah Fearn, Sullivan and Worcester UK LLP will hold a presentation on the title of ”Harmonising TCI wording: one giant step for Bank-Insurance Cooperation.” The session will be held on Friday 8th October at 9:30am.

Basel III policy wordings are bespoke for both the insurers and banks with each involving protracted legal negotiations which may stall the underlying deal while driving costs higher and margins lower. The market has witnessed a significant increase in receivable monetizations both in quantity and deal size. This increase has led to more insurer syndications to meet the capacity demand as well as bank participations to achieve the funding levels. 

ITFA’s release of the genesis version of a harmonized Basel III policy wording (for UK law) is to unveil the NDA confidentiality or secrecy of these bespoke forms with the aim to move the market into a much stronger starting point for their policy negotiations. This harmonized wording will advance the policy negotiations thus reducing cost, increasing margin and most importantly help lead to a more rapid negotiation between the bank and the insurer(s).

Scott is the Global Head of Trade Credit for Willis Towers Watson. Scott and his team specialize in providing Trade Credit insurance expertise for financial institutions and corporations. Scott joined Willis in 2010 and has built a strong team, mostly made up of former Trade Credit policy and risk underwriters to place and service programs for various clients.

Prior to joining Willis Towers Watson in 2010, Scott worked at Atradius Trade Credit Insurance, Inc., a leader in Trade Credit. Over his 25 years at Atradius, he held positions in accounting, direct sales, and underwriting. Scott spent his final five years at Atradius as the Director of Global for North America. In that role, he was responsible for the commercial development of large global business from both a sales and commercial underwriting perspective. Scott was elected to the Atradius Trade Credit Insurance, Inc. Board of Directors in 2005.

Scott holds a BA in Accounting from the University of Baltimore.

Hannah is a managing associate in the Trade & Export Finance team in the London office of Sullivan & Worcester UK LLP.

Her practice area covers trade finance and insurance, advising on a wide range of cross-border trade finance transactions in a variety of jurisdictions, with an emphasis on emerging markets. Hannah acts for leading banks in the market and her experience includes advising on syndicated and bilateral pre-export commodity financings, letter of credit facilities, commodity repo structures, trade instruments and receivables financings, including supply chain finance.

Regularly advising banks on risk sharing techniques, including the drafting of sub-participations and credit insurance policies, Hannah acted for BAFT on the 2018 update of its template Master Participation Agreement for Trade Transactions. She has extensive experience advising on the eligibility of different credit risk mitigation techniques for capital relief purposes under Basel III. Hannah also advises clients on regulatory issues, including sanctions issues arising out of cross-border finance transactions.

We look forward to this interesting session in Bristol!