Future-Proofing Trade Finance Event: 15th June 2022

Agenda

13.00-14.00 – Registration and coffee

14.00-14.15 – ESG within the context of future-proofing trade

Kicking off the first in-person event in this series for nearly three years, Shannon Manders (GTR Editorial Director) and Eleanor Wragg (GTR Senior Reporter) will reflect on how the conversation around sustainability – and the coverage in GTR – has shifted, not least in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, considering the practical implications of the new priorities identified in the intervening period and the extent to which they signal an evolution in the thinking around ESG principles.

14.15-15.05 – Levelling the playing field – adopting a more sustainable approach

As the ESG conversation continues, over-preoccupation on environmental issues has evolved to encompass social and governance issues, to the extent where many global institutions are absorbing diversity and inclusion issues into their ESG strategy, with various reports and surveys determining that a range of systematic factors hold back women-backed and minority-led exporters from successfully conducting trade, a situation only further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This discussion will reflect on this trend and seek to find solutions, from advancing inclusivity and resiliency across the supply chain to ensuring that minority-owned businesses and SMEs have fair access to secure credit lines. The session will also highlight and consider the significance from the various industry initiatives in place to address these challenges, from supply chain offerings from the likes of Walmart, JP Morgan and even Meta, to how export credit agencies are expanding their offerings to tackle discrimination and support the under-supported.

• Moderator: Eleanor Wragg, Senior Reporter, Global Trade Review (GTR)
• Arancha Díaz-Lladó, Chief Sustainability Officer, Twinco Capital
• Maggie Berry OBE, Director, The Heart of the City
• Duncan Sparke, Divisional Director, Man Bites Dog
• Catherine Lang-Anderson, Partner, Allen & Overy

15.05-15.35 Networking break

15.35-16.15 In conversation: Complying with the sanctions landscape
Current geopolitical uncertainty poses many challenges for businesses, with firms needing to navigate increased trading restrictions in line with broader ESG objectives. For those companies involved in cross-border trade, ensuring compliance with the regulatory environment requires many checks, on customers, suppliers, agents, distributors or any other intermediaries against an increasingly long and fast-changing sanctions list.

This session will emphasise the importance of ensuring that trading companies of all sizes (and SMEs in particular) have access to the right information, advice and guidance to ensure compliance, highlighting the important role that technology tools have to play in sourcing, analysing and presenting data from a range of different sources all in the one place.

• Kevin Shakespeare, Director of Strategic Projects & International Development, The Institute of Export & International Trade
• Matt Townsend, Partner, Allen & Overy 
• Rebecca Harding, Chief Executive Officer, Coriolis Technologies

   

16.15-17.05 ESG scoring for trade: Tracking and proving sustainability compliance
March 2022 saw the launch of the first iteration of a new environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring tool, developed in consultation with a range of industry partners, which seeks to enable trade financiers and exporters to better address the challenge of tracking and proving compliance with sustainability standards, through creation of an ESG ‘passport’ for trading goods of any kind.

Coming at a time when trade finance is seeing a huge growth in ESG standards but few tools to allow the industry to measure how those standards are being satisfied accurately and objectively, this discussion will highlight the importance of providing a comprehensive and standardised automated score across the world of trade, as well as the wider significance of what many see as the best opportunity the market has seen so far to overcome this critical challenge to ESG investment in the face of accusations of greenwashing.

• Moderator: Shannon Manders, Editorial Director, Global Trade Review (GTR)
• Merisa Lee Gimpel, Managing Director, Head of Working Capital Innovation, Lloyds Banking Group
• Oswald Kuyler, Digital Standards Adviser, ICC United Kingdom; Head of Strategy Europe, MonetaGo
• Rebecca Harding, Chief Executive Officer, Coriolis Technologies
• Merlin Dowse, Global Product Manager, Trade & Working Capital, J.P. Morgan

17.05-17.10 Closing remarks followed by evening networking