Building investor appetite in commodity trade finance

That's great.

So I think what we've been talking about for the last couple of years here is bringing new institutional investment into the market.

We've been talking about it till the cows come home, and I think it's a very key topic that we want to be addressing, and we want to be talking about this at our conferences and on our media.

How would you describe the current appetite of institutional investment towards the commodity trade finance space?

So cautiously, I would say it improved.

Still, it has a lot long way to go, but I believe that, you know, more and more people are looking to invest in commodities.

The problem is more linked to maybe the supply chain or the, the way it's structured, what type of, you know, goods, if- is it critical, uh, minerals, the financing, like, you know, strategic, who is financing behind, you know, CTF managers or banks or eventually government.

So I guess, you know, more and more with time we see that, you know, pension funds are looking into it, funds, insurance, family offices.

There are many people that are at least interested, and they don't really know how to do it in a secure way.

I do agree with you.

I think there's a lot of different eyes now currently on the commodity trade finance space, and I think that's due to a myriad of different things.

You look at things like the metal market that's booming, renewables.

The demand for all of these different asset classes, I think is massively booming.

But I think it would be remiss of us not to talk about some of the negatives.

And I think a series of high-profile collapses have somewhat tainted the reputation of trade finance as an asset class in recent years.

Is this primarily, would you argue, what drives investor apprehension or, or are there other reasons?

I think that there is a, a big comparison to make.

If I take an example, uh, Greenshill is the obvious one, but it's not really, you know, it's supply chain finance and at the end of the day, the real damage is more about the way that it has been publicized.

So it's mainstream.

Everyone talk about it, everyone is scared, but nobody actually deep dived in the structure itself.

You know, the lack of transparency, the history of the CTF, the deals that they were basically financing or what exactly they were financing.

And that is something probably that is damaging a lot the sector itself.

And probably that's why people don't want to or don't know how to avoid those kind of risks.

And most likely that's where we need to work on.

Yeah.