World Trade Board kicks off new sustainable trade initiative and expands board to promote inclusive global trade

World Trade Board announces new initiatives on sustainable trade, in addition to three existing ones, to promote global trade.

The World Trade Board today announced the addition of a new initiative on sustainable trade, alongside its existing three initiatives, as part of its pledge to advance standards and digitalisation in global trade finance.

Sessions on each initiative will be taking place at the upcoming World Trade Symposium in London on 6-7 June 2017. The event brings together global leaders, influencers and subject matter experts from banks, corporates, industry bodies and not-for-profits to discuss how trade can be transformed to drive financial inclusion through globalisation and digitisation. The four initiatives include:

• Supporting the development of sustainable trade – This new initiative and working group will be co-chaired by Leanne Kemp, Founder & CEO of Everledger who was recently appointed to the World Trade Board. Everledger has built a distributed ledger to track the provenance of luxury goods throughout the supply chain. The group will explore the potential to apply similar technology to monitor the ethical provenance of goods in support of sustainable trade within a circular economy.
• Widening inclusion in global trade for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) – The recent appointment of Berna Ozsar, Secretary General of the World SME Forum, to the World Trade Board supports her mandate of opening up access to trade finance for SMEs, helping to close today’s $1.6 trillion global trade finance funding gap.
• Driving global adoption of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) – Gerard Hartsink, Chairman of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and member of the World Trade Board, will play a key role in driving greater adoption of LEIs by global businesses, as well as SMEs. The objective is to improve transparency, support trade finance digitalisation and streamline onboarding and risk management along global financial supply chains in order to underpin more inclusive trade and SME finance.
• Increasing the level of digitisation of trade through education and encouraging adoption – The fourth working group pledges to enhance awareness of the potential of new technologies such as blockchain and distributed ledger across the different parts of the trade ecosystem, from producers to collateral managers to shipping firms, as well as banks, governments and non-governmental organisations. This working group is led by Enrico Camerinelli, Senior Research Analyst at Aite Group.

“The goal of the World Trade Board and our four strategic initiatives is to promote the vision of an inclusive, prosperous and beneficial trade ecosystem by advancing standards, governance and digital technologies in global trade. Ultimately it’s about securing long-term sustainable trade for the good of all,” said Simon Paris, Co-chair of the World Trade Board and President at Misys. “We look forward to welcoming our distinguished keynotes and participants to this year’s World Trade Symposium.”

Ambassador Michael Froman, former US Trade Representative, will keynote at the event, offering his insight into the rapidly-changing world of global trade. For further information on the World Trade Symposium 2017 and details of the agenda.

The World Trade Board is made up of global leaders, innovative thinkers, influencers and subject matter experts from the different corners of trade and commerce. The members are the co-creators of an organisation that has the objective of shaping the future – to define the parameters and be an enabling force for global trade. The Board shares a common vision – of a collaborative, connected, inclusive trade and finance, built on a foundation of the latest business technologies – to allow the world and people to prosper.

We provide the broadest, deepest portfolio of financial services software on the market. Our solutions cover retail and corporate banking, lending, treasury, capital markets, investment management and enterprise risk. With more than 2,000 customers across 125 countries our team of domain experts and partners has an unparalleled ability to address industry requirements at both a global and local level. We deliver market leading solutions by putting customer needs at the centre of everything we do. We offer a unique componentised, open architecture to enable our clients to innovate, connect and expand their existing services and increase value faster.