ITFA Roundtable Report

In an environment where small and medium sized enterprises remain constrained by limited access to working capital, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) and the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA) convened senior trade, banking and insurance professionals at the ITFA Annual Conference in Singapore for a 30 minute challenge to rethink SME trade finance.

Divided into two teams, participants were tasked with designing practical, scalable products to bridge the $2.5 trillion global trade finance gap using existing market instruments. One team proposed a securitisation framework to aggregate and tranche SME trade assets, freeing up bank capital and attracting institutional investors. The other developed an insurance-wrapped facility leveraging credit guarantees and multilateral support to expand SME lending capacity.

Together, the models illustrate how securitisation and insurance can complement one another in transferring risk, unlocking liquidity and positioning SME trade as an investable asset class. The roundtable also underscored the importance of data transparency, regulatory alignment and standardisation in scaling such structures sustainably across emerging markets.

Download the full report to learn more about the proposed solutions.