Trade finance providers face growing regulatory demands and constraints on bank capital while adapting to digital technology, according to interviews summarised by ITFA. Speakers at the association’s global conference in Split in September discussed how banks serve trading businesses, the potential of digital identity and the limits of artificial intelligence. The interviews were conducted by Trade Treasury Payments (TTP).
ITFA chairman Sean Edwards said the industry needed greater sophistication and resilience to address challenges spanning regulation, defence financing and digitisation. Higher European defence spending was creating opportunities for banks, he argued, but those opportunities required careful management. According to ITFA’s account, Edwards also pointed to closer regulatory scrutiny and scarcer bank capital. Although demand for goods and services continued to underpin trade, he said banks’ approach to supporting buyers and sellers was changing. Developing and retaining younger trade finance professionals remained another priority.
The quality of underlying data was central to the technology discussion. Marjan Delatinne, managing director, sales and business development at Eastnets, and Ivan Jesensky, digitisation broker at The Texel Group, argued that structured, reliable information would determine how effectively AI and tokenisation could improve decisions, payments and transaction efficiency. Delatinne cautioned that AI’s usefulness depended on the data available to it, rather than on the technology alone.
Digital identity could also change transaction banking, the speakers said. ITFA’s summary cited EU EIDAS 2.0 legislation requiring the banking sector to accept European Digital Identity Wallets. Delatinne and Jesensky argued that machine-readable, verifiable digital credentials could allow trust to accompany assets and value through a transaction. That could shorten settlement times and reduce repeated compliance checks on the same documents.
Human expertise nevertheless remained essential, according to Geoff Wynne, partner at Sullivan and Worcester, and Alex Gray, director of trade and transaction banking at the London Institute of Banking and Finance. They argued against replacing direct training and professional interaction with AI, or relying solely on automated systems to detect and address fraud. Both encouraged newcomers to build experience through travel, events, office attendance and conversations with colleagues, alongside formal qualifications and training.