Friday 16 September 2016

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

Dear Members and Friends,

The after-glow of a successful conference in Warsaw is still bright on my face as this newsletter reaches you. The event encapsulated all that ITFA is famous for - substantive and relevant education and information, effective networking and camaraderie all enjoyed in a social setting par excellence. The presentations and panels highlighted a number of our achievements throughout the year, the guide to Basel-compliant non-payment insurance policies for example - but also expertly signposted a number of the issues our market will need to face in the coming year.
    
One of these is, of course, Brexit. From the UK to the remainder of the developed world, as well as emerging markets, investors were highly cautious as the long term ramifications of the UK exiting the European Union were yet to be quantified. However, markets and investors were quick to shrug off the short term dent to investor sentiment as markets pared losses and swiftly recovered.

The announcement by the Bank of England of a fresh wave of monetary stimulus bolstered both investor confidence and the continuous global search for yield. With the global commodities market trading sideways for most of the summer months, monies were promptly redeployed into emerging market economies, as the potential for an uptick in economic activity whet investors’ appetite.

With summer out of the way, it is safe to say that all major economies, both developed and EM, have come out of the gruelling summer months relatively unscathed. However, with the European Central Bank falling short of expectations, all eyes are now on the forthcoming US Federal Reserve rate setting meeting, and particularly on how and when the next interest rate increase will impact the US dollar and subsequently the borrowing costs of emerging market economies. Inevitably, I guess we will all be tracking the performance of the dollar as history has taught us not to take movements in the Greenback too lightly.

In this month’s Newsletter, we present a technical paper titled ''Assignment of Proceeds under Letters of Credit - UCP600''. We then invite you to read an interesting article prepared by GTR Editor, Shannon Manders, on how the industry is facing the challenges and risks of the Trade Finance Learning Gap discussed in the session dedicated to Young Professionals during the ITFA conference.  Finally, a short tutorial has been prepared on how to effectively use the Search Function in the ITFA website.

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


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