Dear Members and Friends,
The after-glow of a successful conference in Warsaw
is still bright on my face as this newsletter reaches you. The event
encapsulated all that ITFA is famous for - substantive and relevant education
and information, effective networking and camaraderie all enjoyed in a social
setting par excellence. The presentations and panels highlighted a number of our
achievements throughout the year, the guide to Basel-compliant non-payment
insurance policies for example - but also expertly signposted a number of the issues
our market will need to face in the coming year.
One of these is, of course, Brexit. From
the UK to the remainder of the developed world, as well as emerging markets,
investors were highly cautious as the long term ramifications of the UK exiting
the European Union were yet to be quantified. However, markets and investors
were quick to shrug off the short term dent to investor sentiment as markets
pared losses and swiftly recovered.
The announcement by the Bank of
England of a fresh wave of monetary stimulus bolstered both investor confidence
and the continuous global search for yield. With the global commodities market
trading sideways for most of the summer months, monies were promptly redeployed
into emerging market economies, as the potential for an uptick in economic
activity whet investors’ appetite.
With summer out of the way, it is
safe to say that all major economies, both developed and EM, have come out of
the gruelling summer months relatively unscathed. However, with the European
Central Bank falling short of expectations, all eyes are now on the forthcoming
US Federal Reserve rate setting meeting, and particularly on how and when the
next interest rate increase will impact the US dollar and subsequently the
borrowing costs of emerging market economies. Inevitably, I guess we will all
be tracking the performance of the dollar as history has taught us not to take
movements in the Greenback too lightly.
In this
month’s Newsletter, we present a technical paper titled ''Assignment of
Proceeds under Letters of Credit - UCP600''. We then invite you to read an
interesting article prepared by GTR Editor, Shannon Manders, on how the
industry is facing the challenges and risks of the Trade Finance Learning Gap
discussed in the session dedicated to Young Professionals during the ITFA
conference. Finally, a short tutorial
has been prepared on how to effectively use the Search Function in the ITFA
website.
We 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
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