TUE, 26 JULY, 2022-theGBJournal| Finverity, the mid-market supply chain finance platform focused on emerging markets, and FIMBank, a leading provider of trade finance, factoring and forfaiting solutions, today announced the launch of a strategic partnership to improve supply chain finance (SCF) and factoring solutions to mid-market companies globally.
As part of the partnership, FIMBank has joined Finverity’s supply chain platform, which provides a seamless origination-to-execution servicing infrastructure. This includes pre-qualified deal flow, transaction processing, real-time risk management and reporting.
The partnership envisages FIMBank scaling up its payables and receivables financing through Finverity’s platform. The first deals, which have already been deployed, are focused on the IT sector in the UAE, while the current phase of scaling up expands industry coverage to agro commodities in the Middle East as well as conglomerates in Eastern Europe.
The partnership will bring FIMBank into the wider trade finance ecosystem on Finverity’s platform. This includes identifying co-funding opportunities, transaction cross referrals and a wider collaborative environment as Finverity’s platform grows in terms of deal flow and funding volumes.
Viacheslav (Slava) Oganezov, Co-Founder & CEO at Finverity, said, “It is still early days for mid-market companies in their digital trade finance journey but there is no doubt that smart digital solutions are the way forward for the sector, allowing funders and fintechs to collaborate with the objective of better serving corporate clients. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with FIMBank as it embraces the digital revolution to scale up its trade finance operations globally and allocate much-needed capital more efficiently.”
According to Alex Fenechiu, Co-Founder & COO at Finverity, “Working with FIMBank to structure a scalable, efficient and quick methodology of deploying capital to mid-market firms was indeed a pleasure. Together we took a critical look at the way things are currently done in the trade finance industry and identified what would work best for FIMBank. This partnership is a testament to the collaborative era between banks and fintechs that we have now entered and charts the way forward for future collaborations.”
Kamel Moris, Chief Commercial Officer, Trade & Commodity Finance & Shailesh Bhala, Senior Executive Officer at FIMBank DIFC Branch, commented: “FIMBank identified Finverity as one of the few platforms actually delivering on deal flow origination in the mid-market corporate sector. The ease of use, strong risk management and reporting, and the best technology we have seen to date combined with strong deal flow origination made for a clear choice. As an established finance provider to the mid-market corporate sector, FIMBank looks forward to scaling up its trade finance operations digitally and providing our clients with the services they need and deserve.”
The “platformication” of trade finance
A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recent report stated high growth is expected in increasing the access to trade and supply chain finance, particularly digital propositions to the mid-market and smaller-end market. By 2025, BCG estimates that 10%-15% of trade finance and 20%-25% of small and medium-sized enterprise trade finance will be conducted through digital platforms. In order to capture this growth banks will need to innovate their product design and execution.
Many traditional trade finance products are not designed to be sold at scale and at point of transaction, e.g., the letter of credit, which is paper-intensive and can take weeks to execute. Finverity’s digital platform turns the tables on this by enabling transactions in real-time and in a scalable manner thanks to automation.
The benefits of digital platforms are becoming increasingly recognized with adoption increasing as the SCF industry evolves into an ecosystem. Finverity expects to see a widening digital gap to emerge between early adopter banks that work closely with fintechs and platforms in order to ride the growth wave, and the laggard banks that are slow to adapt and evolve. Platforms offer banks a highly scalable way to participate in trade finance growth at the small cost of changing the way they operate. Ultimately, platforms are democratising SCF by making the market larger and more liquid, increasing access to finance for all. That can only be a good thing.
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