Tuesday 5 December 2017

CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE - Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman / Head of Legal at SMBC

Dear Members and Friends,

As we come to the end of another year, let me first take the opportunity to thank all those members and guests who attended our Christmas Cocktail Party, which was held on 11th December at the remarkable Victorian Bath House. This venue was host to one of the most enjoyable seasonal parties we have yet organised. For the ITFA Board, this event was an opportunity for us to thank you, our members, for your continuous support and enthusiasm. All ITFA members may view the event photos by clicking here.

Everyone in our industry would know that Emerging markets have, over the years, offered very generous returns to investors, despite the fact that the sensitivity to both commodities and the movement in the dollar currency have always been seen as a threat. Few may be aware but in reality, selective EM countries are much better positioned than developed economies from a fundamental perspective.

The market’s appetite for risk evidently dropped in the initial weeks of November, but recovered swiftly thereafter. That said, there are several fundamental factors that could drive a change in the credit landscape in 2018: rising yields, volatility and the impact of US tax reforms.

Nevertheless, markets remain well positioned to close off the year on a strong footing. Moreover, a weaker US Dollar coupled with the current low inflation and buoyant growth outlook has been benign for risky assets. Global economic growth has been supportive and surprised to the upside, which in turn has buoyed commodity related sectors, in particular oil & gas and basic materials. Future earnings growth will therefore be very sensitive to China. Going forward, the recurrent theme will be China as there are slight signs that the economy is losing steam and slowing.

In this month’s newsletter we read an inspiring article titled ''There are No Superwomen; There are Only Women who have Support'' by Shannon Manders, GTR. Katharine Morton then provides us with the summary of the Insurance Roundtable held in Edinburgh in the month of September. ITFA continues to update you on the various events held in the last months; ITFA partners with IBS to deliver a Trade Finance Seminar in Lisbon, SEARC Trade Finance Symposium 2017 held in Singapore and the ITFA GRC Workshop held in Frankfurt.

May I remind you all that the ITFA conference website is now live. The beautiful coastal city of Cape Town awaits us! We urge you to visit www.2018conference.itfa.org to register at your earliest and take advantage of our Super Early Bird Price. The conference will be held between 4-6 September 2018, so please save the date!

In the meantime, I wish you all the very best for the festive season and a healthy and prosperous new year.

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

THERE ARE NO SUPERWOMEN; THERE ARE ONLY WOMEN WHO HAVE SUPPORT by Shannon Manders, GTR

Confident, classy and exuberant are words that accurately describe Lorna Pillow, London Forfaiting Company’s (LFC) Malta-based head of operations. But for every large dose of charm and kind-heartedness that make up this reputable forfaiter, there are equal measures of sheer grit and determination. In the next installment of GTR’s series about inspirational women, Shannon Manders speaks to Pillow about her rise in the world of trade finance, and the support that she’s had along the way.

Born and bred in Malta, Lorna Pillow – and her two sisters – were brought up in a way that made them feel, as females, an important part of society – on an equal footing with males. “As a child I was told that I had a role to play. That I had a voice,” she says. At school, she cultivated her passion for economics, but couldn’t quite decide if she wanted to be a banker or a lawyer. So she studied all the subjects she would need for either career option – later completing her honours degree in banking and finance. Her parents, she says with gratitude, were adamant that their children get an education.
Discipline and confidence were other key values that her parents were keen to impart to their children. One of the ways in which they did so was by sending them to ballet lessons. And even though Pillow never really wanted to be a ballet dancer, she continued dancing – eventually qualifying as a dance teacher – until she was pregnant with her first child. Ballet instilled in her a sense of conviction, and taught her that even when you’re having a truly bad day, you still have to get up on stage, face the audience and perform.
The principles bestowed on her by her parents were just what Pillow needed when she entered the world of finance.
Starting out in private banking, she then moved into trading international repos and securities lending, taking up a position at an agency on behalf of RZB. Before long the bank decided to shift all of its developed market assets, and she was sent to Austria, solely responsible for setting up the systems and the team. She was just 22 years old at the time. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Pillow was later appointed general manager of the company.
Armed with this “amazing experience”, as she calls it, Pillow then went on to join FimBank in 2003 as the bank was securing its takeover bid for LFC, a move which saw it transform from a relatively unknown Malta-based bank into a global player in the trade finance market.
What followed was a period of restructuring for LFC and of great difficulty for Pillow, who at the time had no trade finance experience. Nevertheless, she was entrusted with establishing the LFC operations unit in Malta.
“I was very conscious that I was working with counterparts in London that had 30 years of experience in the sector,” she says.
Determined, as ever, to prove herself, Pillow spent her free time researching and becoming familiar with the industry that she had found herself flung into. “In trade finance, training is important, but it’s also about being driven enough to look things up for yourself,” she asserts.
Under her supervision, the operations unit was successful in attaining the first ever ISO9001:2000 certification in forfaiting. She also established the company’s factoring department. Today Pillow remains responsible for LFC’s middle and back-office functions, and leads a team of 15 people. She is also deputy chair of the International Trade & Forfaiting Association (ITFA).
Despite all the challenges she has faced in her professional life, none of them compare to the one she encountered when she became a mother and had to grapple with finding a balance between work and motherhood. She remembers the first years as “overwhelming” – particularly because it was a struggle she had never truly understood.
“As a young, vibrant woman I didn’t feel at all discriminated against,” she says, laughing at her naivety. “For me, the world had evolved.”
She remembers thinking that she could simply just take a couple of years off after having her baby, and then go back and find her job as she had left it. The reality, she found, was completely different.
“We all read magazines, and we all have this expectation that we’re going to be superwomen,” she says. But rather than suggesting women have something to prove to the world, Pillow believes it’s healthier to teach young mothers that they need support – and that it’s OK to ask for it. “There are no superwomen; there are only women who have support.”
For Pillow, this support came from her family, but also from her employer. Even after having her two children and returning to work – something she feels she did too soon – she was still afforded opportunities. This, in turn, she says, has driven even greater dedication, loyalty and hard work on her part. As an aside, she jokes that her boss at LFC often tells her she’s tougher on herself than he – or anyone else – can ever be.

For young women forging ahead in the world of trade finance today, Pillow has some astute advice. Firstly, education: “Get it all,” she says. “This will give you confidence, and with that, people will respect you and listen to what you have to say.” Secondly, she urges women to inspire and help one another. “Don’t be afraid to talk about the problems. And when things don’t fit into your schedule as a mother, speak up: reschedule the after-hours meeting so that it works for you, make yourself heard.”

ITFA INSURANCE ROUNDTABLE by Katharine Morton

The ITFA Insurance Roundtable, held on 7th September 2017, was discussed by ITFA’s insurance committee, moderated by Katharine Morton. At the time of the interview, Katharine Morton was still Editor in Chief for TFR, the Trade and Forfaiting Review. Unfortunately, Wilmington decided to stop the edition of this magazine shortly after the ITFA conference. Katharine was nevertheless so kind to transcript the interview so that the readers of the ITFA Newsletter now have the benefit of getting the insights on this important topic.


Participants:
  • Geoffrey Wynne, Partner, Sullivan & Worcester
  • Huw Owen, Global Financial Risks, Head of London Markets, Liberty Specialty Markets
  • Sébastien Heurteux, Head Trade & Insurance Syndications, BNP Paribas
  • Volker Handrich, Head Trade and Supply Chain Finance, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions
  • Robert Nijhout, Executive Director, International Credit and Surety Association (ICISA)
  • Silja Calac, Senior Surety Underwriter, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions and ITFA Board Member, Head of Treasury and Insurance
  • Moderator, Katharine Morton

Walking the fine line

The knotty subject of differentiating and choosing between risk participation agreements, surety and insurance as a way of mitigating credit risk was discussed by ITFA’s insurance committee, moderated by Katharine Morton.


Katharine Morton: Where are we now in terms of insurance policies versus risk participation agreements (RPAs) and what does everybody understand by these?

Geoffrey Wynne: We are looking at a series of potential credit risk mitigants, and, essentially, they have to fall into the section: guarantees. That’s the only real clue that sits in the CRR [Capital Requirements Regulations], and the discussion, will be around which is better – which would you prefer to have – guarantee, first demand guarantee, and, within that, surety, risk participation and insurance.


Katharine Morton: Around the world there are different definitions of what all these things mean. From a US audience, for example, what is possible to achieve with them, and what is not possible?

Geoffrey Wynne: We talk in terms of CRR, which is European, so our discussion is EU-wide. One of the strange things is that that is everybody’s law. That is not an interpretation - that is the law. So, credit risk mitigation is determined in accordance with article 194 up to article 225. And, of course, whether you are allowed to do any of this is still a little bit of an issue. So, I can look at, in the UK, whether you can be an insurer, and that’s governed by an English Insurance Act. In Germany, it is different. And, one of the debates is: are insurers moving outside of what their territory should be i.e. insurance, when they’re issuing surety bonds? Can an insurer issue a guarantee? Is every guarantee issued by an insurer ‘insurance’? And that makes a difference, because insurance law dictates both the regulation of the entity and the interpretation of it. And, then you get into an even more interesting area, which is: can an insurer issue a risk participation? Is that outside the permitted requirements? We would say no, and certainly some around this table, would say no. So, some very interesting and intricate debates, because, as you’ll see, when you say “I guarantee that if he doesn’t pay, I’ll pay,” and if you say, “and I insure you that if he doesn’t pay, I’ll pay,” it may be depending on who says it as to whether that’s insurance or not insurance.


Katharine Morton: That sets up a nice framework for where we’re at, but we’ve got the whole market around the table. Silja, why did ITFA set up an insurance committee?

Silja Calac: When I joined Swiss Re three years ago, there was no insurance community within ITFA. Swiss Re was the only member of ITFA that was from the insurance world. I knew from my previous job that banks often have quite a few problems to find their way around these questions. What insurance should I use? Which insurance gives me which benefits? Because, there is not one product which is all good and another one all bad; each product serves specific needs, and has specific advantages or inconveniences, so that was what we wanted to clarify. That’s why ITFA set up the insurance committee. Since then, many insurance companies and brokers have joined ITFA. We have already achieved quite a lot in giving clarity with our insurance guidelines and with our training efforts. One interesting question is: can an insurance company issue surety or guarantees or risk participation? For surety this seems quite clear because there is regulation associated with that, but Robert will elaborate a little more on this because this is his specialty.

Robert Nijhout: There is a bit of a thin line between what insurance is and what bank guarantees are. The determining factor is how it is regulated. Insurers are regulated by the insurance regulator, which arguably in many countries is the same as the bank regulators, in the same buildings, often in central banks. But, perhaps more importantly, insurance is reinsured and that is usually the reason why some conditions need to be applied in an insurance product because reinsurers don't like certain risks such as nuclear risk or five great power war or financial guarantees and such.

Surety, unlike credit insurance, is legislated as well as, regulated by the regulator. You can start a credit insurance company without having to comply with a certain law. But surety is legislated and regulated on a national level. If there is no surety legislation, you cannot sell a surety bond. It depends on the country on how they define it, but in Europe it is almost always defined as an insurance product, therefore regulated by the insurance regulator and subject to Solvency II in Europe and similar regimes in jurisdictions around the world. But, of course, insurers will do as much as they can to satisfy the clients' demands. If a client wants an on-demand product which is unconditional, then insurers will try to issue that. Another big difference between banks and insurers is that insurers don't have collateral, they just have underwriting. So, if they issue an unconditional on-demand guarantee to just anyone, you don't have any security and you're also in breach of your Solvency II regulations, etc. So, surety companies are very selective to whom they issue these types of products, but they are available. That’s perhaps the attraction for a lot of clients despite the conditions that some surety products have, vis-à-vis bank guarantees; the fact that they don't have to collateralise it and don't have to block credit lines or other ways of guaranteeing the collateral, gives them a lot more freedom.  It’s horses for courses, as Silja said.


Katharine Morton: Where do banks sit on this? Are you using insurance products as a way of just getting away from Basel II considerations?

Sébastien Heurteux: Risk Participation Agreements [RPAs] are a dream product, it is on-demand and it is simple to explain internally and to credit committees. The wording is simple. It limits scope for wording negotiations. I would say RPAs are more automated in their way of working. Now to simplify the product to such extent, such cover will only works between two parties which have a high level of trust. The RPA is a dream product but it is not accessible or offered to everyone. At the industry level, Should there be a default by the Insurer in a situation of claim, this would taint the reputation of the product. In the wording of an insurance policy, terms and conditions are detailed in a greater manner. .

As far as BNP Paribas is concerned, we use both products – RPA and insurance policies – in a very “fungible” manner. The RPA is a more efficient and user-friendly insurance policy, but at the end of the day, we contract an RPA in a similar way we contract an insurance policy.

A point raised was the RPA’s jurisdiction-specific feature. What many banks want is a single tool used worldwide to cover its risks and/ or get capital relief. Insurance Policies have more of a worldwide reach in their availability across jurisdictions. The more the covers are differentiated in their nature or form between business lines, regions or territories, the more banks will be exposed to operational risk. The key risk for an Insured to lose the benefits of an insurance policy is often assimilated to the Insurer going burst ie a Credit Risk. We should not underestimate the risk of the Insured not fulfilling correctly his obligations viz. the Insurer: an Operational Risk.

I would say there’s a sense of uniformity that we need to have in a Global Organisations to make the risk cover work optimally. Today RPA remains very specific to certain Insurers, to certain underlying asset class, to certain geographies. Until RPAs are offered in a more widespread manner, it will only be used in an opportunistic manner.


Katharine Morton: So, is that an issue of documentation, is this an issue of just different types of risks that are covered, or different jurisdictions in terms of doing things on a one-to-one basis?

Silja Calac: What Sebastien said is important. Risk participation does not give the same level of comfort to the insurance company as a traditional insurance policy does. Therefore, with a traditional insurance policy, an insurer would cover up to 90%, 95%, sometimes even 98% of a risk while under a RPA, one would usually not cover such a large share.

Volker Handrich: I agree. Our main product is risk participation. What does the client want? In the EU, for CRR compliance, capital relief is a big topic. RPA is a great product because it’s unconditional hence it gives the capital relief and it’s a very simple approach. If there’s a non-payment, we come in. There are some challenges, one is on the underwriting side, and this is where there is a place for both insurance as well as RPA.

Because we give this broad cover, this guarantee type of cover, we would not do 90-95% of a transaction. It’s a question of ‘‘skin in the game’’. Thorough underwriting is much more important. On the retention side, we are much more selective and usually would like to go for 50/50 risk sharing - we want to see a lot of ‘’skin in the game.’’

The other challenge is that whereas usually the RPA is based on English law, as Geoff pointed out, from a regulatory perspective, and from a tax perspective, you still have to respect local rules, and there the treatment can go in your favour or against it. The UK Insurance Act is another question. The regulatory question is ‘’can we use the same wording in every country?’’ And the answer is ‘no’. In the EU, yes we can, typically, but in the US for example, we cannot. In Singapore, we have to adjust it. In other countries, like China, you have to get every word change approved by the regulators.

So it can become a challenge from a tax perspective too. Sometimes it’s an advantage in so far that IPT [Insurance Premium Tax] is not applicable under the RPA in certain countries, but again, you have to check in every country.


Katharine Morton: What is Liberty’s view on these products?

Huw Owen: I’d just like to pick up on a couple of points. From our perspective, we’d make a distinction between the two RPA products we’ve been talking about. The RPA that’s issued by the bank is one type of product that’s probably underpinned by contract law. Some of the RPAs that are issued by insurance companies, we feel that they are insurance policies.

This is probably the underlying topic of conversation: what is an insurance policy and when is an insurance policy an insurance policy? I appreciate that this is a tricky area due to there being no specific definition of a contract of insurance under UK/EU law but arguably from an English law perspective, if the product is issued by an entity that’s an insurance company, and it has the characteristics that common law has shown to define an insurance policy [consideration, insurable interest, fortuity then it probably is an insurance policy.


Katharine Morton: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck. Why is it important?

Huw Owen: Potentially this is semantics because it’s just arguing about what you call it. But it also goes to what the underlying law is and any disclosure obligations there might be. So, in the absence of anything specific in the policy that strips away some form of duty of disclosure then arguably there is a duty to disclosure by proxy because it’s an insurance policy to the provisions of the Insurance Act.

I agree that there is a place for the different products and ultimately what we’re all focused on is giving a client the best product – the product that they want. So, the question is – ‘’does it work for the client?’’ And, if we think that both products can qualify as a guarantee under CRM [credit risk mitigation], then maybe that’s doing what it needs to for the client.

One potential area of improvement of insurance is its usability. There are two aspects to the usability in terms of understanding some of the conditionality in the document. We’ve come an awful long way. Geoff might disagree, but I spend a lot of time renegotiating with our clients – in a way negotiating with Geoff and his team – and I think those wordings are very good, and they’re very good from a client’s perspective, and we’ve really narrowed down the operational risk that banks are running. I know Geoff might probably would go a little further, but they are good templates.

The other issue where insurance probably needs to focus and really where the insurance RPA’s strength lies, is on the claim payment. The potential concern for banks is when they come to claim, they could be facing an entirely different team within the insurance company who are making a determination on the claim often using external loss adjusters. In this context I can understand why any insurance RPA’s self-certification claims process and payment in 10 days, ask-questions-later type of approach, can look more attractive as a product.

Some of the big insurance providers engage their claims function throughout the underwriting and wording negotiation process, so that there’s no risk of reunderwriting when you get to a claim situation.  When we are assessing a claim, we can respond very quickly and are focused on making timely payments on valid claims, so that we meet all of our obligations. Because, the worst thing we can do is make a mess of paying a valid claim, that is not good for anyone.

There are clearly some advantages to the private credit insurance market’s willingness to consider up to 90% indemnity and its risk appetite both in terms of structures (very little that the market won’t consider) and jurisdictions. But the willingness to offer high indemnities came about from a partnership with clients where insurers were relying on material information provided to by clients.

Geoffrey Wynne: I agree. Insurance has now come a long way and is a lot better. Under the Insurance Act the concept of the insured being able to discharge its liability on disclosure by making a fair presentation of facts, does make a lot of difference. But, they’re different creatures. Insurance is insuring against designated risks, it so happens that when you’re dealing with credit insurance, non-payment insurance, that that’s the same risk that the other products cover with the guarantee and the RPA. What’s interesting is that there’s a waiting period for payment with insurance. We have accepted that 180 days, the conventional waiting period, is still timely for regulatory purposes, for CRR purposes.

The requirement to act as if uninsured in that period, to keep working at it, has a slightly different relationship, and I was interested that Volker used the phrase “skin in the game”. It is quite interesting because whilst the insurer says, “you’ve got to have a bit of skin in the game,” actually what the insurer says is “you’ve got to work to get this money back, even though you’ve insured it. I’m looking to you, the insured, to offer me something I can understand that I can assess.” So, I’ll assess the risk based on what you’ve told me. And it just so happens that I’m quite likely to have a bigger and better appetite for risk because my view, cynically, if you like, is that if I charge premiums of 10%, so long as I don’t have to pay out more than 10%, I make a profit. A bank looks at every single loan it makes and expects it to be repaid. So, it can’t go to its credit committee and say, “let’s do these 100 deals but I’m certain that 10 of them are going to fail.” The credit committee would say “which of the 10 are going to fail? We’ll get rid of those.” The balance, the skin in the game point in risk participation is essentially that the guarantor and the insured will work together.

Silja Calac: I fear we’re starting to mix things up. When you say that you believe that when insurance do risk participation this might be insurance, I’d say of course it is all insurance, but there are different insurance products. When Swiss Re does risk participation, we actually do it under the surety regulation [Class 15 as per SI No 359 of 1994 -European Communities (Non-Life Insurance) Framework Regulations, 1994]. This is clearly a product which is separate from the comprehensive non-payment insurance product which we are comparing here, and it is not regulated by the UK Insurance Act, for instance. But, it is a product which insurance companies are allowed to do, and which is regulated as such. Both these products have their specificities and can be of advantage to a bank or not. I would like to avoid confusing readers here, not that they end up thinking it’s all the same, and some insurance companies are just twisting regulations.

Volker Handrich: The thing is do we talk about the law dimension? Is it a regulatory dimension? Is it a tax dimension? That’s where the difficulties start. The credit insurance product, on a global level, is the more standardised product, because there is a more established market, whereas RPA works very well in certain countries or regions where you have the capital relief, but in other countries you have to adjust on a local basis and that’s where the challenge lies - standardisation versus a better product.

We’re all within insurance regulation and we all have a value proposition. Ultimately as a bank you have to decide for which client and which situation is the right product. Insurance and RPA are both unfunded. If a bank has very high funding costs they might go for funded syndication instead. They might opt for a very different route if capital relief is the big driver. Then it depends on the bank’s internal capital model. Most follow the advanced approach, some follow the standard approach, and depending on the model they use, maybe RPAs are better but then maybe in a different situation you have a US bank that has sufficient capital which may prefer the lower retention or maybe even a better price from credit insurance.

Sébastien Heurteux: If we put aside law, legislation, regulations etc, and we take a very operational approach. In both cases whether it is Liberty issuing Insurance Policies or Swiss Re issuing RPAs, we are facing Insurers. An Insured should have the exact same approach in terms of disclosure and answering questions when presenting a file. Similarly Insurers seem to go through similar underwriting processes. So, regardless of the type of cover, an RPA or an insurance policy, the placement process and interaction between the Insured and the Insurer look very similar.

Going one step further in the situation of a claim, the willingness of an Insurer to pay overrides the type of cover. In the examples that we have experienced or that we know of, I would say insurance policies and RPAs have always been timely paid indistinctively from their nature. As a track record, in terms of the efficiency of the product, we are all good.

At the end of the day, what we want is the cake. If we have the cherry on the cake, it’s not the cherry that will feed us, it’s the cake. Now, the cherry will always look good….

What I hear is that between an RPA and an Insurance Policy each bank has a sensitivity of its own. It is often ruled by their own internal systems, understanding of the products, methodology and/or applicable regulation.

The bank regulators have not tackled the insurance product per se when laying out the regulation. Now the Credit Insurance is commonly treated as an extension of what the regulator defines as Guarantee when tackling Credit Risk Mitigants. This somehow can blur the picture or set undue constraints to the efficiency of Credit Insurance. That is why I don’t think there is a right or wrong.


Katharine Morton: Where are we at with the Insurance Act, what’s changed and what will change?

Geoffrey Wynne: The Insurance Act presented a very good opportunity. It essentially rewrote insurance law, which had been more than 100 years, very insurer-biased was the perception of the market. Therefore, there were lots of reasons why insurers were able to escape liability. The new Act tried to close loads of those gaps. It did not remove the responsibility from the insured to tell the story properly but said you could do it at the beginning in one presentation. The problem has been two fold. One, the Act allowed opting out of certain clauses which we believed the insurance market was using a little bit too much and one might say abusing, in other words they didn’t have to think about the point, they opted out to go back to where the old law was. And the second thing, where ITFA in fact was trying to step in, was saying, “Given the fact that we have a really good Act, why have we not got some standardised wording in the policies, or indeed, why don’t we have standard policies, a bit like the BAFT risk participation agreement?” In other words, why are insurance companies still issuing their own policies?


Katharine Morton: Maybe Rob would like to make a comment from the ICISA perspective.

Robert Nijhout: First of all, the insurance market is an open marketplace, subject to antitrust regulations. So if insurance companies all collude to draft one policy wording, and the market had to swallow that, that’s unacceptable. But perhaps more important is we have a fiercely competitive market, the market is extremely soft, and the underwriters have to compete very hard for their business. With this soft open market, there is downwards pressure on price. And if you don’t want to compete on rates, on premium rates – and I wish we could charge the 10% that Geoff mentioned earlier – you have to compete on something else, which is the quality of your product.

Quality is defined in the policy wording, in a way that the customer likes to see, and whether that’s a global wording for a multinational or whether that is a very specialised wording for a particular deal with structured finance and a long tenor. So, the market wants that difference. Having said all that, it’s in the interest of the insurers who are dealing with banks with a symbiotic relationship, and we depend on one another to come up with a product that is recognisable for banks. So, you could think of creating guidelines or parameters or something in that realm where you say, “if the policy complies with these characteristics, then it’s more acceptable for banks,” but then we would say, “can the banks also have a single opinion on what they think of insurance companies?” And that doesn’t happen either. So, the first thing we need to do is educate one another, because I don’t think insurers appreciate the limitations or the specificalities that banks have to deal with and vice versa, so it would be good to have a bit more openness on both sides.


Katharine Morton: That’s what IFTA’s up to, isn’t it?

Silja Calac: As Geoff mentioned, we have thought about drafting a non-payment standard policy. At least in the insurance committee, we think you could standardise a non-payment insurance policy to some extent, and that’s also our aim. The guidelines were a start. The time isn’t yet ripe to go too far, but Huw would you agree in the longer term we should aim to come to more standardisation?

Huw Owen: If you could reduce the amount of time we spend on conference calls with the lawyers that would be a bonus! Potentially the biggest losers of a standardised product will be the brokers. This is their leverage on what they sell, and maybe some clients have got themselves in a position where they’ve been using the market for a very long time and they have a very good wording themselves, so maybe they wouldn’t be that keen to use a more standard product.

But maybe, it’s inevitable. It’s a bit controversial but certainly we still spend a lot of time on wording negotiations. Most banks are moving to the point where they have one policy template, but there are 50-odd markets now, so to get the approval of 50 markets takes quite a long time. The point about the opt-outs and carve outs – yes, I think that insurers have had the use of carve outs and we have narrowed it down to a couple of clauses that we feel that if we didn’t have the carve outs the clause would be more or less toothless. I’m talking specifically about Section 11 – causation – but the Insurance Act work was very welcomed, it definitely redressed the balance more in favour of the client. It was long overdue. The market responded relatively well and we got there in the end. We came to a very good landing, again with some lawyers’ help on certain issues, like defining what constitutes a reasonable search and knowledge for our banking clients. Arguably we all could have reacted slightly better, but we got there in the end. And one thing it did demonstrate is that you’ve got 50-odd markets, but they are relatively collaborative, and that’s one of the defining positives around our market.

Geoffrey Wynne: What’s interesting was that there was a long gap from when the Act came into effect and from when the Act was passed, and that time was not used well, and that’s been a criticism. The point is, there was no real meeting of the minds. And, it was interesting that the RPA, the risk participation market, having gone for years with lots of different forms, finally woke up in 2006/2007 to the idea that it would work to have a standard form of wording, and therefore it was collaborative in a way that you would probably have said five years before then that banks would never have agreed. What banks have done is, they all have their little idiosyncrasies and, 10 years down the road, the idea is to re-tread where we’ve got to. And in some ways, Huw you’re right that, in the insurance market, the combination of a lot of insurance companies a, lot, lot more Lloyds underwriters and a lot of brokers has meant that nobody saw it really in his interest not to put in his two pennies worth on the wording. Whereas the banks in RPA terms said, “actually, we don’t want to waste time on those long phone calls,” and now on many risk participation that we’re involved in there might be one or two exchanges about one or two tiny issues in the drafting. The lawyers would actually like the insurance market to get to that point. We’re not saying “standardise totally”, but we are saying, “Why do we have to rewrite this? Why isn’t Clause 1 the same? Why have I got to look and see whether Clause 2 has been put into Clause 12 and is also in Clause 8?” And I think that the RPA has sort of overcame that.

Sébastien Heurteux: In the past, the policy wordings for credit insurance were worked-out on a bilateral basis between the Insured and the Insurer. One party was proposing a template that was amended to reach an acceptable format to both. At that time, there were a limited number of insurance companies and Insureds. Over the past few years, the market has grown very rapidly with now over 60 insurance companies. At the same time lawyers have started to be used for the drafting of insurance policies.

With the new Insurance Act (and CRR requirements), the involvement of external law firms has increased even more rapidly. . With a rather small number of lawyers truly knowledgeable about credit insurance, these very few law firms came out to be instrumental in setting, common ground between Insureds and Insurers on policy wordings.

Because of both the credit insurance market growth and the legal and regulatory environment changes, the role of law firms has suddenly become essential. The limited number of knowledgeable law firms advising Insureds and Insurers has resulted in more uniform templates used throughout the credit insurance market.


ITFA GOES BACK TO SCHOOL AND PARTNERS WITH IBS LISBON TO DELIVER TRADE FINANCE SEMINAR by Duarte Pedreira, ITFA Head of Young Professionals

We all know that trade finance has historically had difficulties in attracting the attention of school leavers and university graduates. The reasons for this are numerous, but can be summarised as follows:
  • School leavers and university graduates have a negative perception of the industry (less attractive, uninspiring) when compared to more appealing sectors such as capital markets, M&A, hedge funds, etc;
  • Complexity of the industry and lack of coverage at school/university level leading to natural barriers of entry (normally new entrants learn on the job);
  • “Club” mentality of the industry may mean little effort is put in passing on knowledge;
  • Lack of interest from industry players in investing in boosting capacity in what has normally been perceived as being a low earner within the financial industry;
  • Lack of opportunities for young professionals to alter their initial career path in the financial services sector (difficulties in embracing a career in trade finance for those who did not embrace one at the outset).

With a view of changing the course of events and reversing the “inevitable” future where an inverted age pyramid would dominate the industry (with the necessary consequences in terms of its sustainability), ITFA decided to take action and created a Young Professionals initiative to empower young professionals in the industry, as well as to market the industry to those potentially interested in joining it.

One of the many ways in which we are trying to get more people to take an interest in trade finance is by going directly to the source, namely to schools and universities and by developing initiatives that are aimed at promoting trade finance and allowing aspiring trade financiers to be able to better understand the trade finance industry, thus empowering them to choose it as a career path.

The first initiative of this kind post-Edinburgh Conference took place in Lisbon on the 27th October, when ITFA and IBS (ISCTE Business School – an ITFA Associate Member) got together and organised a trade finance seminar. The seminar was not only aimed at the IBS student community but also at Lisbon-based banks, insurance companies and corporates who are either already involved in trade finance, or who are keen to learn more about it.


The seminar was very well attended, with a total of 80 people present.

The afternoon started with our good ITFA friend and now Trade and Export Finance Professor at CUNEF in Madrid, Elvira Bobillo delivering an engaging 1-hour long presentation, where she focused on explaining what trade finance is, with a focus on why trade finance is an exciting career choice. Elvira’s passion for all matters trade-related were the necessary driver to engage the audience in what was perhaps the critical part of this seminar.

The initial presentation was then followed by ITFA’s Chairman Sean Edwards and by the ITFA Head of Young Professionals Duarte Pedreira introducing the association and everything that it can provide to its members, with a focus on the recent engagement in ensuring continuity through the engagement of new and aspiring trade financiers.

After a very engaging and extremely well organized networking break, the room was again filled with curious and engaging minds, who first witnessed Sean’s enthusiasm for supply chain finance and FinTech as he took the audience through his presentation on “Contemporary issues in trade finance – Fintech and the financing of the supply chain”.

The final item on the agenda was a debate on “Trade finance, the oil that keeps the world trade engine going - current challenges and opportunities”. The panel was moderated by Duarte Pedreira and had a number of high calibre panellists. Asides from Sean and Elvira, who were representing the industry as a whole and the industry’s educational arm respectively, the audience heard from Maria Jose Melo, Director of the Portuguese ECA Cosec, Angela Dourado, Head of Trade Finance for Bankinter Portugal, and Paulo Ribeiro, the Chairman of the Portuguese tomato trading company Unitom. Once introductions to the panellists and their institutions were completed, the debate moved on to a lively and rather dynamic stage, with panellists interacting on topics around the current political and economic cycle (Trump, Brexit and the rest) and its impact on trade and finance, and the lack of sufficient available trade finance facilities for the existing levels of demand – where Paulo grabbed the opportunity to take the user’s perspective and challenge Maria Jose and Angela in particular on why his company had to endure such great levels of pain when dealing with its trade finance suppliers. The panel was then concluded with a number of inspiring remarks from the panellists sharing their experience in passing on knowledge to younger generations of aspiring trade financiers.


In essence the main objective was attained – both students and professionals in the audience came out of the seminar with a better understanding of the trade finance industry and excited with the potential benefits of following a career in the subject. As for the educational side of it, IBS is now exploring including trade finance in its existing curriculum and even linking up with some of the conference participants to achieve it – this will make trade finance available to hundreds of students in the future!

Definitely an encouraging outcome, which begs for renewed efforts in this front. If you are interested in developing a similar initiative ad foster the knowledge of trade finance at school/university level, please contact Duarte Pedreira to explore further.

Lastly, may we remind you all that photos taken at the event can be viewed here, however these are available only to ITFA members.

SEARC - TRADE FINANCE SYMPOSIUM 2017, SINGAPORE - 3 NOVEMBER 2017

The Trade Finance Symposium 2017, jointly organized by Bank of China Singapore Branch and ITFA was held at the offices of Bank of China, Singapore for the second year in a row. The event was held on 3 November 2017. The Symposium was a well-attended event, with over 100 participants from over 50 banks, insurance and trading firms from London, Germany and Hong Kong.

The Symposium started with an opening address by Mr. Qiu Zhikun, General Manager of Bank of China Singapore Branch, Country Head, to warmly welcome ITFA members and BOC customers.

Participants were actively engaged in topics presented by Mr. Lawrence Low, CEO of Allen & Gledhill Regulatory & Compliance Pte Ltd and Ms. Yvonne Chiu, Partner of KPMG Singapore. They discussed the current issues in Financial Crime, specifically in Trade Finance and the current most discussed topic in the Finance industry: IFRS 9, and also touched on the impact on trade finance respectively.

Mr. Paul Coles, Global Transactional Distribution, Portfolio Management and Distribution, Global Trade and Receivables Finance at HSBC Bank plc and ITFA Board Member (Head of Market Practice) delivered a presentation on ITFA’s activities and educational events/seminars. He also spoke on Market Practice and discussed on the liaison work with BAFT, ICC and other industry bodies.

Ms. Silac Calac, Senior Surety Underwriter at Swiss Re International S.E. and ITFA Board Member (Head of Treasury and Insurance) gave a very informative presentation on the current regulatory environment and insurance as a risk mitigation tool.

The half day symposium ended with a closing speech from Ms. Sophie Zhong, General Manager, Head of Bank of China Forfaiting Unit (Singapore) and Chairperson of ITFA SEARC, to call on banks and ITFA members’ close collaboration for a New Era of Trade Finance.

Most importantly, it was very rewarding to hear that the Symposium was very well received by the participants, who enjoyed the presentations and meet-ups with like-minded Trade Finance players.

Lastly, may we remind you all that photos taken at the event can be viewed here, however these are available only to ITFA members.

ITFA GRC WORKSHOP - FRANKFURT, 7 NOVEMBER 2017

The GRC workshop was hosted by ODDO BHF. Florian Witt, Head of Marketing & Development, International Banking welcomed the 34 participants before Waltraud Raderschall, ITFA GRC chair, opened the workshop.

Having taken place for a number of years now, the ITFA GRC fall event offers the opportunity to exchange views on a wide range of topics which can be submitted by the participating institutions prior to the event.

The board members (Christine Borusiak, Silja Calac, Oliver Pfaff, Waltraud Raderschall and Knut Richter) guided through the various questions consisting of latest updates regarding BAFT agreement, regulatory issues, questions on Forfaiting and L/C matters, queries and updates on Insurance and Fintech.

There were positive contributions to most of the topics and everyone could experience the concentrated knowledge present in the room.

Waltraud, who was very active in the GRC and engaged in ITFA since its inception (e.g. ITFA board, ITFA GRC chair, ITFA Market Practice committee) has retired at the end of October and we can honestly say that she will be missed not only by the German community but also by the ITFA community as a whole.

At the end of the workshop the re-elections took place and in addition to the existing board members, Irene Port of UniCredit Bank AG and Stefan Fett of Commerzbank were newly elected. It was unanimously agreed that Irene Port will chair the GRC.

The workshop was followed by a Christmas dinner sponsored by ITFA and some topics of the day were further discussed along with tapas, wine and beer.

Monday 4 December 2017

NEW ITFA MEMBERS

ITFA is pleased to announce another two new ITFA members.

Agmin Italy Spa handles export of logistics equipment to the United Nations, EU and Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for use in emerging markets, aid and peacekeeping missions. They are also advisors to major Italian industries for export in sub-Saharian Africa, Middle East and Latin America.

Mr Giovanni Bracale will be the main contact person for all ITFA related matters.

TMT Metals Holdings Limited is a UK based company trading ferrous and non-ferrous metals, minor metals and ferro alloys from offices in London, Switzerland, Poland and India. The Company has 2 trading entities as follows:

1. TMT Metals (UK) Limited – a trading entity based in London
2. TMT Metals AG – a trading entity based in Zug, Switzerland

The objective of the company is to grow to a multi-billion dollar turnover metal trading house focusing on high margins, dedicated metals, zero price risk approach, product diversification and full integration of the value chain as core principles. In order to achieve those objectives the company employs an established and experienced trading team which executes the strategy of growth and integration.

Mr. Ray Webb will be the main contact person for all ITFA related matters.

Sunday 3 December 2017

SAVE THE DATE

May we take the opportunity to remind our readers about the upcoming event - ExCred International 2018. The conference will be held between 27/28 February 2018 and will be held at Hilton London Tower Bridge, London. The leading event for the global trade & investment insurance industry is back. Join the ExCred community and engage with more than 350 senior representatives of Banks, Traders, Exporters, Private Insurers ECAs & DFIs. Gain insight from 100 + speakers, who will bring you a definitive update on how insurance is facilitating international trade and investment. Please view the website for further information.

Monday 6 November 2017

CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE - Sean Edwards, ITFA Chairman / Head of Legal at SMBC

Dear Members and Friends,

I can hardly believe that we are approaching the end of yet another fascinating year. It is so true that time really does fly by when you are having fun and being kept busy doing what you enjoy most.

Duarte Pedreira and I are fresh off the plane from Cape Verde where we delivered a half-day’s training on forfaiting to the delegates of the annual Afreximbank Structured Trade Seminar. The event also allowed us to strengthen our relationship with this important partner in advance of our annual meeting next year in Cape Town. With some sponsors already on board, we are shaping up very well indeed for our flagship event.

Over the past couple of years, investors and corporations have dedicated a large amount of time and resources focusing on emerging market economies, which, in 2016 and 2017 have been the leaders in terms of performance, GDP growth, trade and flows into the economy. For market analysts, EM sovereign bonds are particularly important as they are the benchmark for the state of their respective economies, in terms of GDP growth, inflation, central bank monetary policy, risk aversion in the markets, not to mention that they are also impacted by movements in the FX market.

Following the sharp correction in EM bonds in February 2016, all the conditions were optimal to make EM a reliable alternative to investment in the economies of the developed world. Valuations had become way too cheap, their economies benefitted from the ever weakening US Dollar, demographics remain highly in their favour, and more importantly, central banks and governments in EM economies had taken investor friendly measures in ensuring the continuous flow of monies in EM credit. 

Yet again, our traditional markets have proved fruitful for investors with trade, one of the main enablers of growth.   

On a different note, in this month’s Newsletter, Marcus Wade, Founder and Owner at Trade Asset Exchange, has contributed an interesting read entitled ''The Blockchain Market’’. Paul Coles, ITFA Head of Market Practice, keeps us up-to-date with the ''Updated/Replaced ITFA BAFT Legal Opinion.’’ Another interesting article is the introduction of another of the new ITFA Board Members, Khilola Turaeva - ITFA Head of Institutional Relations. ITFA is pleased to announce another new member - Xangbo. Our regular feature - Chart of the Month, contributed by Dr Rebecca Harding of Equant Analytics takes a closer look at China-US Trade.

May I remind you that all ITFA members are invited to attend our annual ITFA Christmas Cocktail Party. Each Main Delegate (per member institution) was sent an invite by email, so we would greatly appreciate if you could RSVP on info@itfa.org by latest 1st December 2017. As always, we encourage you all to attend this invaluable networking opportunity! May we kindly point out that this event is strictly for ITFA members only and access to the event is restricted to confirmed guests only. We also look forward to welcoming our ITFA members to the ITFA Educational event titled ''Navigating Trade Finance in a Changing World’’ which is being organised directly prior to the Christmas Party. For more information please read further on in the Newsletter…SAVE THE DATE!

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