COVID-19 case rates are rising while fatalities remain relatively low across much of Europe. The UK saw its first significant tightening of restrictions in months with socialising limited to groups of six in England.
In their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have learned and applied many of the lessons of past crises. Early testing and tracing at scale gave countries including Germany, Taiwan and South Korea a lead in combating the virus.
The ICC’s Survey on Trade Finance reveals the industry-wide challenges and disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic push trade and trade finance into a state of global uncertainty.
TFG heard from BAFT’s President & Chief Executive Officer, Tod Burwell, on some of the latest updates from the association for 2020, what new initiatives have been launched, and what members can expect for the remainder of 2020.
SMEs need to re-think their innovation strategy including digitalisation as the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital technology in trade.
COVID-19 has dominated the headlines for the last few months. But now, with the negotiations stepping up and the transition set to end by December, Brexit is moving back into the limelight.
Trade digitization and electronic documents will be the new-norm as a result of the COVID19 pandemic which will accelerate the transformation process.
As advocates of DLT in global trade and commerce, TFG are partnering with 101 Blockchains to promote the education of specific technologies that are currently available.
ICC Banking Commission has released its 2019 Trade Register Report, revealing COVID-19’s potential to disrupt global trade.
As the APAC region solidifies its global trade leadership, banks gain an opportunity to serve new finance needs as long as they make needed technology and process changes.
TFG’s Ross McKenzie spoke to Singapore based Mike Walker, Finastra, discussing the relationship between banks and corporates, and a reality check on the current state of technological innovations and digitization to open up opportunities in trade and SCF.
In response to ADB’s recent USD $200mn to boost trade finance in response to the impact of COVID-19, TFG caught up with Manilla based Steven Beck on TFT. The requirements for multinationals and development banks has never been more important in keeping supply chains running.
We discussed with AIG some of the challenges and opportunities in the trade credit insurance sector. Enabling the much-needed reduction of the trade finance gap, and bringing in a wider array of investors while mitigating the risks of such expansion in the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty will be a huge challenge in 2020. However, dealing with a broader collection of participants in the trade finance ecosystem in terms of jurisdictions, size of the borrower, types of assets and fintech entrants set us up for interesting times.
