🌟 Editor's note

Editor’s Note | Week of 3 November 2025

By Carter Hoffman

Well, we have a lot of leftover Halloween chocolate and Deepesh rode a camel past the Pyramids in Egypt - so I guess you could say it’s been a pretty good week!

Don’t worry, though, we didn’t let Deepesh actually take a vacation! We sent him to Cairo for the 2025 EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) Trade Finance Forum. The EBRD’s event brought together banks, policymakers, and development partners to talk about liquidity, digitalisation, and how trade finance can keep pace with the world it serves. All in a location that is suspiciously less dreary than London this time of year…

Reprieve from the rain aside, it was a great event for TTP as we formally announced our new partnership with the EBRD TFP, which will see Trade Treasury Payments deliver a suite of interactive insight modules designed to help partner banks stay current with the ever-evolving world of trade and supply-chain finance. Think of it as turning the best parts of our coverage into practical, on-demand learning for the people driving this industry forward. More on that to come.

And while Deepesh was “networking” on camel-back, the rest of us were busy publishing new conversations and stories from every corner of the trade world. From the Berne Union AGM in Ottawa, we released two new video interviews (one on blended finance, the other on unlocking private investment in high-risk markets) along with an analysis of our biggest takeaways from the gathering of the world’s ECAs, which you can find as this week’s slow read.

We also went deep on policy and practice. Our latest Q&A with the Commonwealth Secretariat explores how agricultural data could become a foundation for food security and digital sovereignty across member states. Over in treasury land, we unpacked HSBC’s Voices of Treasury 2025 report, which looks at how technology and talent are reshaping the function for the decade ahead.

And for those who prefer their insights in audio and video form, this week’s highlights include a Sibos-recorded podcast with BAFT and SWIFT on the G20 roadmap and a conversation with Surecomp and Finverity on whether seamless integration in trade is finally within reach. Spoiler: it is.

So yeah, it’s been a week to remember! A little travel, a lot of spooky costumes, and more than a few stories to come out of it all. We’ve even got plenty more lined up before the year winds down, including a few things we can’t quite talk about yet (but soon).

Until next time — keep using “networking” as an excuse to do cool things in cool places with cool people :)

— The TTP Editorial Team

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• Slow Read

  • Reflections on security, capital, and modernisatio …

  • Panellists spoke about the promise of automation t …

• Trade digest

• Treasury, payment and global banking digest

• EBRD announces TTP partnership

• 🗓️ Upcoming events

• Multimedia from Trade Treasury Payments

• 🚀 Our latest edition

Slow Read

Reflections on security, capital, and modernisation at the Berne Union AGM in Ottawa

At last week’s Berne Union Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Ottawa, it was clear why this gathering, co-hosted this year with Export Development Canada (EDC), remains such a cornerstone for the export finance community. At first glance, the agenda looked predictable, and of course, the familiar talking points dominated many sessions, too. AI, data, and interoperability continue to occupy their share of airtime. Panellists spoke about the promise of automation to speed up underwriting and improve customer experience, even as they cautioned that human oversight and data quality remain essential.

Panellists spoke about the promise of automation to speed up underwriting and improve customer experience, even as they cautioned that human oversight and data quality remain essential.

Sustainability and the energy transition were also a core part of the conversation. For export credit agencies (ECAs), insurers, and development finance institutions, supporting green and resilient finance is now important to remain relevant even as some of the climate rhetoric globally has lulled. Climate adaptation, in particular, seems to be being reframed as a financial stability issue, as opposed to purely an environmental one.

And, as always, SMEs held their place on the agenda. Despite all the progress in digital access and alternative finance, small businesses still face many of the same barriers of limited collateral, slow onboarding, and high compliance costs. Of course, there was talk about how digital underwriting and automation offer hope, but despite that, the gap remains wide.

Not to breeze past these crucial topics – they will surely continue to shape the industry’s trajectory in the months and years ahead, so it is good that they are discussed in the room – but we have reported on these issues in immense depth in the past. What I want to spend more time analysing in this article are two other topics that I picked out from the discussions in Ottawa that felt a bit different from our usual commentary.

Trade digest

Treasury, payment and global banking digest

EBRD announces TTP partnership

Shona Tatchell, Head of the EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme, said:

“The trade and supply-chain finance landscape is changing faster than ever. Digitisation, new regulatory frameworks, and sustainability considerations are transforming how transactions are structured and how risk is managed. For our partner banks, keeping pace with these shifts is essential.

This partnership with Trade Treasury Payments gives our network access to practical insight as the market evolves, real case studies, new regulations, and examples of innovation from within their own regions. It supports our objective to help institutions learn, share, and create together; to build capacity, level the playing field, and, ultimately, deepen development impact across the economies where we operate.”

Deepesh Patel, Founder and Managing Director of Trade Treasury Payments, said:

“We see this as a continuation of the EBRD’s exceptional work in trade finance education. What we’re adding is a living, breathing layer of applied insight, stories and experiences from the market as they happen. It’s about connecting what banks already know with what’s changing today, helping them translate knowledge into strategy and impact.”

The new digital content, developed jointly by EBRD TFP and TTP, will be rolled out on the EBRD’s learning platform in phases and be available to EBRD partner banks in Q1 2026.

Topics will include open-account trade, receivables and payables finance, forfaiting, digitalisation, sustainability, and disclosure standards, with regional examples drawn from Central Asia, the Western Balkans, and beyond.

🗓️ Upcoming events

Partner events

Multimedia from Trade Treasury Payments

🚀 Our latest edition

Did You Know? The Commonwealth’s new National Agricultural Data Infrastructure (NAgDI) model could help countries treat agricultural data like a national asset. By standardising how crops, trade flows, and prices are recorded, NAgDI aims to build the foundation for digital sovereignty and food security across 56 member states.

Till next time,

Trade Treasury Payments (TTP)