Announcing the ITFA Speakers – 45th Annual Conference 2018

With only one month to go to the ITFA Annual Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, the ITFA Board is pleased to announce that André Casterman, Chair ITFA Fintech Committee, will be moderating the panel session titled: ”The 2020 Trade Finance landscape – how FinTech will help us transform and grow African and cross-border business.” Session panellists include: Johanna Wissing – LiquidX, Ka-Kit Man – CCRManager, Marilyn Blattner-Boyle – AIG and Surath Sengupta – HSBC.

Collaborating with fintechs has become a proven formula for transaction banks, their clients and their investors. As the adoption of fintechs increases, how will the global landscape have transformed by 2020? Which financial services benefit the most from fintechs today vs. tomorrow? How can ITFA help its members during this transition? This, and more, will be debated at the ITFA Annual Conference during the fintech panel session.

André Casterman is Chief Marketing Officer at INTIX – the data management fintech. André also advises various clients on trade finance innovations. In addition, he chairs the Fintech Committee of ITFA with a focus on helping banks automate trade finance and helping to establish it as an investable asset class through use of data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Prior to his current role, André spent over 20 years with SWIFT, leading various technology innovations in inter-bank payments, corporate treasury, and trade finance. During that time, he established an institutional partnership between SWIFT and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and created the first ISO 20022-based digital trade settlement instrument.

Based in London, Johanna Wissing is a Director for LiquidX Inc. LiquidX is a fintech business providing a network for the financing of trade and working capital assets. The company was founded in New York in January 2016 and since Autumn 2017, Johanna has been responsible for setting up the European office with two other colleagues.

Prior to her current appointment, she was looking after Barclays’ global trade offering for the insurance sector, which includes the provision of regulatory LCs, and other instruments supporting the underwriting of the reinsurance sector and the Lloyd’s of London specialty market. Before that Johanna has held several roles at Barclays, including several years in trade finance syndication as well as within the Financial Institutions team. Johanna joined Barclays on the bank’s graduate programme in 2010.

She holds a MSc in Management from Warwick Business School and a BA in Political Science from The University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Ka-Kit Man has over 15 years’ experience in Trade Finance distribution and insurance. He is currently CEO of CCRManager, a cloud-based platform for support distribution activities. Prior to CCRManager, Ka-Kit was a Director of Trade Finance Syndication, APAC for Barclays Bank based in Singapore, where he expanded the distribution and product capabilities in the region.  Prior to Barclays, Ka-Kit was the Head of Corporate and Insurance distribution desk, Portfolio Management in RBS based in London, and was responsible for structuring corporate trade related syndication and credit insurance mitigation. Ka-Kit is a qualified chartered insurer and holds a BEng, MSc and MBA.

Marilyn Blattner-Hoyle is global head of supply chain and trade finance for AIG and in that role also leads the global trade finance center of excellence developing new products/ processes including the trade finance-related blockchain/technology applications. Marilyn joined AIG in 2015 to focus on implementing AIG’s funded and unfunded supply chain finance products and to support AIG’s trade finance receivables and securitisation transactions.

Marilyn previously worked as a lawyer in the international banking and finance practice for global law firm Hogan Lovells in London and New York where she serviced numerous bank clients as well as corporates. Marilyn was also seconded in-house to Citibank’s trade transaction services EMEA team including commodity trade finance, supply chain finance and risk optimization divisions. Prior to that, Marilyn was a senior associate in strategic and tactical consulting. Marilyn is also on the Advisory Board of Tradeteq Limited. Marilyn was recently awarded the ‘Innovator of the Year 2018’ by Credit 500 for Women in Credit.

Surath Sengupta is Managing Director and Global Head of the Portfolio Management & Distribution (PMD) unit of HSBC’s Global Trade & Receivables Finance (GTRF) business area. In his role, Surath is responsible for the capital, liquidity and capacity for the GTRF assets. His team is also responsible for all secondary market activities for GTRF.

Prior to this role, Surath was Head of Global Trade and Receivables Finance, HSBC India leading a team of 400+ responsible for Business Development, Product Management and Operations. Surath has also undertaken other senior leadership roles in India and the UK across Global Banking, Commercial Banking and Transaction Banking.

Surath is a Chartered Accountant from Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and has a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta University.

We look forward to welcoming André and the rest of the panel in Cape Town.