Just about six months ago, Trade Finance Global reached out to a variety of trade finance experts to help answer some questions we had about the industry. Like always, our friends across the industry came through and provided us with some detailed thoughts on the ins and outs of the trade finance world. 

This past week, Trade Finance Global (TFG) stopped by the inaugural ITFA and BCR: Trade & Investment Forum 2023 to learn more about making trade an investible asset class.

In TFG’s conversations with industry experts, we have learned quite a lot about trade volumes and commodities, trade technology, and trade credit insurance. While there is plenty of uncertainty regarding the global outlook in 2023, it is clear that there are many areas of optimism for international trade.

According to Edwards, reducing the record-high $1.7 trillion USD global trade finance gap will be amongst the most important considerations facing the trade finance industry in 2023. The trade finance sector is developing several tools to address this issue.

In this article, Sean Edwards, chairman of ITFA, offers some admittedly unreliable predictions for the year ahead in trade finance

This article is the first in our Winter 2021-22 edition of our quarterly magazine, Trade Finance Talks

Last week, at the ITFA Annual Conference, TFG’s editor, Deepesh Patel, sat down with Sean Edwards, chairman of ITFA.

The guidance note looks at Term SOFR (SOFR is the Secured Overnight Financing Rate), the ARRC recommended RFR term rate

TFG’s Deepesh Patel spoke to ITFA’s Chairman, Sean Edwards, about the ITFA Structured Letters of Credit Working Group, and the emergence of Structured Letters of Credit as a variant of Traditional LCs.

By the end of 2021, it’s anticipated that LIBOR rates will be discontinued, transitioning to the SONIA or SOFR. But what does this mean for trade finance? ITFA explains

ITFA has led another industry wide initiative to draw the attention of governments and regulators to the importance of the continuous support of all the different insurance tools in times of crisis.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect numerous people and organisations, ITFA have today released practical advice on the signature of documents. This is not legal advice.

We heard from ITFA’s Chairman on exploring possibilities of trade finance as a new asset class, as a trade facilitator in emerging markets

TFG’s Nikhil Patel sat down with ITFA Chairman, Sean Edwards, discussing the highs (and lows) of 2019, from a trade, tech and regulatory perspective. We asked ITFA’s view on whether the fireworks of trade wars might slow in 2020, and what’s needed for blockchain to work for trade in 2020.

Trade Finance Global heard from Sean Edwards, Chairman of the ITFA at the NEARC (North East Asia Regional Committee) Seminar held in Beijing earlier this month.