Crédit Agricole CIB has appointed Thibaut Jean to lead its Export Credit Agencies and Multilateral Financing Solutions franchise, a business that now touches everything from energy transition projects to complex cross-border funding structures. 

Thibaut has spent nearly two decades across different roles within the bank, which gives him a clearer view than most of where the next set of challenges and opportunities are likely to appear.

In this exclusive interview, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) Trade Editor Carter Hoffman spoke with the new appointee about those challenges and opportunities, and what he sees as the defining priorities for the team.

A career built across trade, structuring, and client coverage

Carter Hoffman (CH): You’ve worked across trade finance, structuring, asset distribution, and corporate coverage. How have these perspectives influenced the way you think about building partnerships between banks, ECAs, and multilaterals?

Thibaut Jean (TJ): This journey within Crédit Agricole CIB has given me a broad understanding of what our clients are expecting from us in the development of their business and the importance of delivering tailor-made solutions fitting with their needs. In the Export Finance market, we know that serving our clients implies a perfect alignment between all stakeholders (banks, ECAs, multilaterals, but also private insurers, etc). Our very long presence in this market and deep knowledge of the whole ecosystem put us in the right position to support our clients in their strategic projects.

CH: You’re taking over a team that is already recognised as a market leader. What’s one dimension where you think Crédit Agricole CIB’s ECA and multilateral franchise can evolve further under your leadership?

TJ: Our franchise is constantly evolving because the market itself is moving and our clients’ requirements change over time. This is the beauty of our industry, as a few years back, the global landscape and the available solutions for our clients were very different. Therefore, the main challenge ahead of us is to show our agility and capacity to constantly adapt. For me, this is definitely the key condition for success.

Evolving mandates and global alignment

CH: Export credit agencies were once seen mainly as instruments of national industrial policy. Today, they’re increasingly part of the global climate and development finance architecture. How do you see their role evolving over the next decade?

TJ: I believe the traditional role of ECAs as a tool to support national industrial policy will remain. However, I agree that their mandate has widened a lot over the last few years in line with the strategic priorities of governments (energy transition, supply of critical raw materials, re-industrialisation, etc.) in a more fragmented global context. This has been particularly true after the COVID-19 crisis and the beginning of the war in Ukraine, given the disruptions these crises have created on a global scale.

In this context, ECAs have launched new initiatives with the development of the so-called “untied” solutions, and more recently with the new concept of “shopping lines”. All these solutions, with their own features, go in the same direction: sovereignty and protection of the national interest.

When we talk about ECAs’ role in the current context, I have to mention the defence sector. The geopolitical context calls for increasing defence spending, and ECAs are playing a critical role in these G-to-G negotiations. Volumes will continue to grow, and some ECAs, which were reluctant before, are now opening up to support the investments in this sector.

At Crédit Agricole CIB, we will continue to be present in all these segments of activity and will bring our expertise and guidance to clients.

CH: At a time when global coordination feels more fragmented, multilaterals and DFIs are being asked to do more with constrained balance sheets. How can private banks like Crédit Agricole CIB support that mission without diluting commercial discipline?

TJ: We have forged solid partnerships with DFIs and multilateral institutions at a global scale, and renamed our department from “Export Finance” to “ECA and Multilateral Financing Solutions” to reflect the fact that DFIs and multilaterals are a core focus of our development strategy. Our experience shows that combining the guarantees brought by multilaterals programs with our expertise, knowledge of the local specificities, and balance sheet capacity brings significant value to our clients. Cooperation between multilaterals and commercial banks is a “win-win” situation, and we will work on reinforcing it further.

Sustainability, sovereignty, and shifting trade flows

CH: A lot has been said about aligning export finance with the energy transition. But what practical changes (i.e., in areas like risk appetite, tenor, or structure) are needed to make genuinely green projects bankable at scale?

TJ: I think the export finance market has moved on from this topic. First, you will recall that, as part of the modernisation of the OECD Arrangement package reform, the CCSU was amended in 2023 to increase the flexibility of financing terms and conditions related to energy transition projects (with repayment terms of up to 22 years, and other potential flexibilities). What we may, however, regret is that the reform could have gone a step further by establishing a reduced level of premium for “green” projects.

Second, we need to recognise that ECAs have done a great job developing new solutions to provide more flexible solutions, with a specific focus on Capex related to energy transition and the fight against climate change. The major transaction we closed earlier for our client SSAB in Sweden for 2.7 billion euros is a great example of a combination of tied and untied solutions across different European ECAs to support the energy transition in the steel industry.

On Crédit Agricole CIB’s side, we are very clear – and it has been affirmed again in our new medium-term plan ACT 2028 (released on November 18th, 2025) – that the bank will maintain and expand its commitments towards energy transition.

CH: Where do you see the next wave of ECA-backed or multilateral-supported activity materialising, and what does that say about the changing centre of gravity in global trade?

TJ: Given the plurality of solutions developed by ECAs and multilaterals recently, the answer to this question is multifaceted, and I see different trends. First, the rise of protectionism and geopolitical tensions among major powers may redesign certain corridors with potentially more intra-region trade flows to which the industry will need to adapt. Second, for many of our clients (particularly in Europe), ECA-backed solutions in their different forms become an important tool for their capital structure as a way to diversify their funding sources beyond other traditional instruments (e.g. bonds, term loans). This use of ECA financing will continue to grow. And finally, we will continue to see significant opportunities related to sovereignty in different aspects (energy – including nuclear -, industry, defence, digital, etc) where ECAs and banks have an important role to play.

Innovation, leadership, and the next frontier

CH: Your earlier work involved setting up Crédit Agricole CIB’s Asset Distribution desk. How do you see secondary markets and risk-sharing platforms evolving as tools for scaling ECA and multilateral finance?

TJ: There is no doubt that the secondary market on this specific asset class will grow. If many deals in the past were structured as “club deals”, this is less of a case today, and many sizeable transactions are now simply underwritten by one or two banks to simplify the execution for borrowers. For banks like Crédit Agricole CIB with a very strong underwriting capacity, our ability to mobilise the secondary market is key to keeping our leadership in the market.

If the risk-sharing platforms are widely spread on the trade finance market thanks to a deeper standardisation of the underlying instruments, this is less the case today in the field of export finance, where each transaction has its own features. However, I am convinced that our market will evolve towards a more automated and systematic cooperation with our investor base in this area. 

CH: Export and multilateral finance are often viewed as relationship-driven and document-heavy. Where do you see the biggest potential for digital tools to genuinely transform how these deals are originated or monitored?

TJ: The ECA market is probably lagging a bit behind globally on new technologies, but the potential is huge, in particular on the AI side. Crédit Agricole CIB has placed the use of new technologies at the heart of its transformation strategy and I can identify various use-cases for our business, such as: market data analysis to provide the most accurate proposals to our clients, operational efficiency (credit risk, compliance, E&S, legal) so as to accelerate the execution process, portfolio management with early warning signals, etc.

CH: This field demands deep technical knowledge, but also diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding. What qualities do you think define the next generation of leaders in export and multilateral finance?

TJ: Cross-cultural understanding is a must to succeed in this sector, but I would say that adaptability will probably be a very important skill moving forward: the whole market is evolving fast, and any geopolitical event may impact our activity. We can see the example of this if we look back to what happened after the COVID-19 crisis or the beginning of the war in Ukraine. But these kinds of events are equally a source of opportunities, but also require the capacity to anticipate and have a clear vision of where and how we can really bring value to our clients.  

CH: If you could achieve one tangible change in the ECA and multilateral finance ecosystem during your tenure, what would it be, and why would it matter for global trade and development?

TJ: The keyword here would probably be “Simplification”, and while new technologies will accelerate and become more efficient, it is not the only factor to consider. Every stakeholder in this industry (banks, ECAs, Multilaterals) shall work on simplified products and processes to avoid our solutions being viewed by clients as complex and long to implement.

In this sense, I see as positive what the World Bank has done with the one-stop shop at MIGA level or what ECAs are doing when developing untied solutions or shopping lines.

The potential of our business is huge and will continue to be more and more relevant to our clients in different aspects, so let’s take on the challenge!