Media Appearances

via Global Trade Review by Shannon Manders

Banks are rapidly accelerating AI experimentation across trade finance and transaction banking operations, but discussions at the BAFT (Bankers’ Association for Finance and Trade) Global Annual Meeting in Orlando revealed an industry increasingly torn between excitement over efficiency gains and unease over security, governance and the long-term implications for banking jobs. 

Across multiple panels on transaction banking, embedded finance and trade digitisation, speakers described AI as one of the few realistic ways to modernise a heavily manual industry still dependent on document checking, fragmented data and operationally intensive workflows. 

Joon Kim, global head of trade finance and cash management platform at BNY, said banks without clear AI strategies risk falling behind competitors already embedding automation into trade operations. 

“If you do not have an AI initiative at your respective organisations, and do not have a use case, I think that’s sort of like… a red flag,” Kim said at the May 3-6 event. “AI is going to be a fundamental element that’s going to drive our business so that we can build the scale and do more trade transactions for our clients.”

Read the full article here.

via Trade Finance Global by Flora Prideaux

Foreign exchange (FX) poses a unique problem for the trade finance industry. The global scale of commodity finance leaves vendors negotiating a huge variety of international jurisdictions, regulations, and currencies daily. 

While the speed of payments has skyrocketed, commodities themselves are still moving with ships. Financing multi-currency transactions that rely on assumed conversion rates is increasingly difficult amid the volatility of this decade. 

At BAFT Europe 2026, a panel moderated by Vanessa Manning, Head of Transaction Banking EMEA at MUFG, titled ‘Navigating the Future of FX: Innovation, Risk and Client Experience Transformation’ discussed the innovation led by corporates, the challenges of market integration and instant payments, and the future of FX. 

Read the full article here.

via Trade Finance Global by Doğa Usanmaz, Joanne Fraser, Edward Collis, and Alina-Elena Pauna

Trade finance events tend to centre on the trials and tribulations of banks, analysing how developments in the industry – be it because of digitalisation or geopolitical mayhem – impact those on the financing side of international trade.

Corporates are viewed through the eyes of banks, a sight blurred by clouds of rigid regulation and tight liquidity. Banks are investing in automation and new payment infrastructure, but the perspective of the corporate end user is often missing from the equation.

During this year’s BAFT Europe Forum, hosted in London, a panel titled ‘The Voice of The Ultimate End User – The Global Corporates’, brought together representatives from across the corporate and non-profit spectrum – all the way from the charity end with Save the Children to global energy company Shell and consumer goods company British American Tobacco.

Read the full article here.

via Trade Finance Global by Tania Ahmed

• Transaction banking is becoming increasingly technology-driven, with banks expected to embed directly into client operations and act as a central hub for diverse financial services.
• Despite rapid innovation in areas such as AI, real-time payments, and APIs, the industry faces ongoing tension between modern digital solutions and legacy systems that must continue to coexist.
• Future progress depends on collaboration, interoperability, and attracting new talent.

Read the full article here.

via Trade Finance Global by Deepa Sinha, Martin Cannings, Mahika Ravi Shankar, and Silvia Andreoletti

• Stablecoins are fully backed digital assets that provide stable value, enabling near real-time, cost-efficient cross-border payments on blockchain networks.
• Their most effective use cases lie in sectors with high payment friction, such as remittances, commodity trading, and interbank liquidity transfers.
• Regulatory clarity and interoperability between systems will be critical to unlocking stablecoins’ long-term adoption and integration into global banking.

Fully transparent, programmable, secure digital money that maintains a stable value: 20 years ago, stablecoins sounded about as realistic as flying cars and holograms. But recent technological advancements and regulatory innovation have made this once-distant dream a reality, turning it into one of banking’s hottest topics.

However, as with much almost too-good-to-be-true tech, it can be hard to separate hype from substance. And the more hype, the further from the fundamentals we stray. For the first episode of Trade Finance Global’s (TFG) new podcast series with BAFT, Banking on the Present, Mahika Ravi Shankar, Deputy Editor at TFG, sat down with Deepa Sinha, Senior Vice President, Payments & Financial Crimes, and Women in Transaction Banking, and Martin Cannings, Co-Chair of Payments, at BAFT, to dissect the stablecoin: what they are, who they’re for, and where they’re really headed.

Listen to the full episode here.

via Global Trade Review by Jacob Atkins

US banking regulators have proposed maintaining the current capital treatment of key trade finance products as part of the country’s adoption of the latest tranche of Basel reforms.  

If the proposals unveiled on March 19 are implemented, trade-related contingent instruments with a maturity of one year or less will retain a 20% credit conversion factor (CCF), which denotes how much capital must be held against a given exposure. 

Transaction-related contingent items with a maturity of more than one year, such as performance standby letters of credit, performance bonds and bid bonds, will retain a CCF of 50%.   

Read the full article here.