One question we look forward to exploring in the Euromoney Trade Finance Survey 2025 is: which main trends impact your day-to-day trade finance activities?
Operating in such a documentation-heavy environment, banks and corporates are focused on digitising this space. A key takeaway from Sibos regarding trade finance, as noted by the Euromoney team on the ground, is that the industry is speaking a common language – so there is hope for digital future of trade finance.
Hope grows as banks shared with Euromoney some impressive figures:
Over 50% of DBS’s documentary trade transactions are now digitally initiated;
More than 70% of ING’s Benelux trade transactions are digitally initiated;
Over 30% of Lloyds’ direct guarantees are now digitally issued;
All of Santander’s supply chain finance transactions can now be initiated digitally.
Considering where the trade finance sector was just a few years ago, these figures highlight remarkable progress. Key drivers include updates to the legal framework, work on digital standards, collaboration with wider trade finance actors involved in transactions, and the digitisation of banks’ initiation and processing channels. For the latter, banks have implemented various operational and technological strategies to encourage customers to execute trade-related transactions digitally.
