CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman / Head of Legal and Special Adviser to The Global Trade Finance Department At SMBC, Jan 2022

Dear Members and Friends,

On behalf of the ITFA Board, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a Happy New Year and all the very best for 2022! I sincerely hope that 2022 will bring you good health, peace and happiness.

With a new year comes a new list of ITFA events, and despite all odds, I can proudly say that we already have a good number of events lined up. We have started populating the 2022 Events Calendar, which can be viewed on the ITFA website and is updated on an ongoing basis. Click here to find out more information about the various events and webinars being organised during the course of the year.  May I take the opportunity to remind you to follow us on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company/itfa-org for instant updates.

You may have also seen that we recently launched a new committee, the ITFA ESG Committee https://itfa.org/about-us/functions/esg/ the purpose of which is to advance concrete, thoughtful advocacy, awareness-raising and adoption of ESG and sustainability principles, practices and standards in international trade and trade-related financing.

Although perhaps a fault on the right side, we are aware from member feedback that you are not always able to pick out subjects of particular interest to you from the large amount of material that we produce: our membership is large and growing, spanning several sectors, and we always strive to satisfy as many of our members as possible. We are therefore pleased to inform you that from the end of January we will be producing a roundup email of the association’s latest news and developments.  We hope that this improved service will facilitate matters, as all news items will be grouped in one email, giving you the ability to choose which ones are relevant to you. May I thank all those who provided us with their constructive feedback.

Finally, may I once again take the opportunity to thank all our members, associates, partners and sponsors for their support in 2021. Your contribution is highly appreciated. Should any members wish to contribute to our website by becoming website sponsors, or should you wish to contribute towards the monthly newsletter, please send an email to alexiavella@itfa.org.

In the very first edition of the 2022 ITFA newsletter, the ITFA Board provides a summary on the ITFA Conference Sponsorship Opportunities, Porto 2022. In another article, Karl Page, Chair of NERC, shares some important feedback following the NERC member feedback exercise recently carried out. The ITFA Emerging Leaders Committee also provide an interesting read titled: ‘’Do something good, boost your career: mentoring the next generation of trade financiers.’’ James Bailey of KCS Group shares an article titled: ”Russia and Ukraine: An inflation of conflict?”. Simon Cook, newly elected member to the ITFA board provides some insight on his role and ambitions within ITFA. We are also pleased to announce that CalBank has joined as a new ITFA member.

We also look forward to hearing from you with any feedback you may want to share with us by sending an email to myself, any of the Board Members, or to our general email, info@itfa.org.  

Best wishes

Sean Edwards