The mood at Sibos 2025 this October was one of confidence across the banking industry. Our Head of Funding, Jeremy Shaw, and Finance Director, Nigel Bottrill, met with banking partners at the annual conference and observed a strong appetite to collaborate on working capital. Why now? While valuations of the current global trade finance market vary between USD 52 and 54 billion, everyone agrees that it is growing. Projections are positive, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (

As the global economy restarts its engine after tumbling into the deepest recession in generations, suppliers and buyers are switching from survival to revival. To ensure liquidity gets to where it’s needed, technologically enabled working capital tools offer an attractive opportunity to smooth the cash conversion cycle, while connecting deep pools of credit to the real economy.

Whilst Covid-19 has hit many sectors of the economy extremely hard, some sectors have weathered or even grown during the crisis and associated quarantines. Q1 sales have been strong in the IT, Healthcare, Paper & Packaging and, perhaps unsurprisingly the alcoholic beverage sectors which have all remained open for business.

Global supply chains are stressed. Two years of pandemic and now war in Ukraine have wreaked havoc on the world’s complex and finely calibrated supply chains. Labour shortages, logistics chaos, sanctions and embargoes are causing shortages and price inflation across a range of vital raw materials. This has immediate knock-on effects on the price and availability of intermediate and finished goods.