Trade Finance Week, Ukraine 2019
The annual event was a resounding success, with hundreds of industry specialists having the chance to discuss challenges and opportunities
The TFP’s excellent Trade Finance Week took place on 16-20 September 2019, bringing together 300 delegates from the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), local and international commercial banks, and experts in trade finance, correspondent banking and compliance.
The annual event provides an important platform for delegates to discuss challenges and opportunities to cooperate, and to seek professional advice from recognised industry experts.
There were four main events: the Annual International Conference, a workshop on compliance, a workshop for documentary credit specialists and a workshop on financial crime counteraction.
The week in Kyiv not only facilitated fruitful discussions between the delegates – who covered many complex topics such as money-laundering risks and best practice controls in correspondent banking – but also yielded useful feedback from various stakeholders. The event will be instrumental in policy dialogue, the development of trade finance in Ukraine and the country’s access to international markets.
Following the success of Trade Finance Week, the EBRD, NBU and International Compliance Association (ICA) will continue working together to develop trade finance in Ukraine and find ways of managing money-laundering risk. A joint action plan has been put together, which includes “train the trainer” compliance programme centres across Ukraine.
Such a great event! At the end of the conference there was a feeling of the productiveness of the time we spent and a feeling of ‘growing wings’ to further develop trade finance.
The support offered by the EBRD and ICA is invaluable and overcoming adverse consequences of de-risking is one of the key goals in NBU’s strategy. Meeting the high anti-money-laundering world standards is a must for Ukraine, and workshops such as these and the certification of experts is one of the effective ways of meeting these standards.
Ukraine is one of the largest trade finance players in our Trade Facilitation Programme. We are sure that the compliance capacity development will help Ukrainian banks to create a state-of-the-art AML ecosystem so that it becomes a support system for importers and exporters and a hostile place for those that want to abuse it.
The EBRD trade finance compliance partnership with the ICA has been an unqualified success, with many Ukrainian banking students performing well in the certifications. The EBRD scholarship scheme is a great support to the jurisdiction, and the cooperation and support of the National Bank of Ukraine is highly valued.