Author: Digital Trade Outlook

FCI has finished a succession it announced in February. Betül Kurtuluş is now secretary general of the factoring industry association, replacing Neal Harm after an eight-month transition. Harm said in February he would retire in September, and she became deputy secretary general that same month. Kurtuluş has more than three decades of experience in factoring and receivables finance. She joined FCI in 2018 as regional director, covering Central and Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Europe, and later became director of strategic marketing and business development. Before that she spent over 14 years as general manager and board…

BAFT has a new head of trade, and he comes from outside the banks. Alexander Malaket succeeds Craig Weeks, who has retired after 43 years in the industry. Weeks held senior leadership roles at global banks, insurance companies and trading companies. Malaket will lead BAFT’s trade policy, practices and education work and support its trade councils and committees. He will work with industry stakeholders to define best practices and shape policy recommendations on trade and supply chain finance. He founded Opus Advisory Services and has more than 35 years in banking and consulting across trade, supply chain, trade financing, trade…

Mercore Capital has a new chief executive with three decades in structured trade finance. Anne-Marie Woolley joins the lending arm of Mercore Group, and Johnny Ohgrøn Hansen comes in as deputy CEO. The report does not say who Woolley replaces. Woolley left Africa Global Trade Finance (AGTF) in February 2026. AGTF is a London-based boutique lender to African SMEs, backed by Zebu Investment Partners, and she had led it since 2021, after almost four years as an independent consultant. Her earlier senior roles include Standard Bank, Nedbank, Standard Chartered and Barclays, mostly in Africa and other emerging markets. Hansen has…

Belfius has handed its trade finance business to someone who has been with the bank for under a year. Laurianne Bouchart, who joined in November 2025 as head of sales for trade finance, is now head of trade finance. She reports to Koen Vierendeels, head of transaction banking. Her route here is unusual. Before Belfius, she was commercial director for trade credit insurance and debt collection at Coface. Earlier she spent 14 years at BNP Paribas, including a stint as head of sales for global trade solutions in Belgium, and seven years at CBC Banque & Assurance, the francophone branch…

BNP Paribas is restructuring its global cash management business, and it has chosen the person who ran corporate cash management for its key clients to lead the change. Nicolas Cailly is now Head of Cash Management & Servicing Transformation. His task has two parts. He is to grow the cash management franchise across the EMEA to US and EMEA to APAC corridors, and to change how the bank delivers servicing. BNP Paribas treats the two as one effort: faster growth, supported by an operating model that can scale without losing quality or distinctiveness, built on a mix of human expertise…

One of Deutsche Bank’s longest-serving trade bankers has moved to a rival. J.P. Morgan has hired Atul Jain as head of global trade and working capital sales, taking over from Natasha Condon. Jain spent 25 years at Deutsche Bank. His last job was managing director and global head of financial resource management in the corporate bank, based in Singapore from February 2026. Before that he spent almost four years as global co-head of trade finance and lending, and earlier headed trade finance and lending for Asia Pacific. Condon is not leaving. Her new title is head of global trade and…

Citi has reshuffled the leadership of its trade business in three regions, and two of the three new heads come from corporate banking, not from trade itself. Manish Bajaj will run trade for Japan, Asia North and Australia. He joined Citi as a management associate in 2005 and has spent more than 20 years at the bank, most recently as Head of Corporate Banking for the Philippines. He has also worked as a senior banker in Mumbai and as Asia Pacific Energy Industry Champion. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant. Shalin Shroff takes Asia South. He has nearly two decades…

Kansas City Fed COO Kim Robbins, the first chief administrative officer of FedNow, will lead Federal Reserve Financial Services from 16 November.

Swift moves to two tier governance. J.P. Morgan’s Graeme Munro chairs a 15 member Supervisory Board drawn largely from global transaction banks.

The Solana Foundation has launched Solana DvP, an open source escrow program for atomic delivery versus payment settlement of tokenised assets, with input from J.P. Morgan.