ITFA Trade Finance Investment Ecosystem (ITFIE)

The financing of international trade has long been the domain of banks with bulk of the global market share historically concentrated amongst banks. Trade finance is experiencing a level of visibility unparalleled in its long history and there is clear recognition of the need to widen the trade financing ecosystem and bridge the trade finance gap to support the global supply chains that are the arteries of trade. This includes SMEs based in developing and emerging markets, where the challenges in accessing affordable trade finance are most acutely felt.

It is widely acknowledged that banks alone will be unable to address global unmet demand for trade financing, as a result of balance sheet constraints and limitations in risk appetite. There is therefore a clear and compelling need to create an ecosystem and enabling framework to facilitate access to Trade finance by advancing the evolution of trade finance as an asset class for alternative investors. These may include asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds and others who seek a risk/return profile that aligns with the character of trade finance portfolios.

ITFIE was created with this very objective under the chairmanship of Alexander R Malaket, Opus Advisory and Surath Sengupta, HSBC with a group institutional investors, banks legal firms, technology and other key players in the ecosystem.

As a the first output of the ITFIE – a working group led by N L N Swaroop, HSBC and Geoffrey Wynne, Sullivan & Worcester are today publishing a ‘Whitepaper on developing a Practitioners Guide to making Trade an Investible Asset Class’ which highlights the challenges and recommends a few solutions to make trade finance widely accessible and investible by institutional investors. The aim of this whitepaper is to collect viewpoints and feedback to developing standardised framework, creating legal directory and defining a technological framework for trade finance.

ITFIE looks forward to your feedback and inputs on this very important topic to build on this work further to collectively develop trade finance as an asset class. Please find here link for the survey (https://itfie2022.questionpro.eu/survey) to share your feedback or you may contact the authors as per details provided in the paper. 

We would also appreciate if you could complete the last question providing us with your details, i.e., institution name, sector and country. This added information would assist us tremendously in building this work further and incorporate views of all stakeholders. 

It would be of great help if your feedback is received by latest July 15, 2022.