GTR Changemakers

Alisa DiCaprio: Boosting Financial Inclusion

In the latest episode of GTR Changemakers, we speak with Alisa DiCaprio, chief economist at distributed ledger technology company R3, about the growing trade finance gap and the potential for digital solutions – such as central bank digital currencies and cryptocurrency – to boost financial inclusion for SMEs.

GTR Changemakers is a new podcast series from Global Trade Review’s editorial team, featuring in-depth interviews with the personalities behind some of the major shifts shaping the trade and trade finance industry.

Removing legislative barriers to digital trade

In the latest episode of GTR Changemakers, we speak with Jon Boran, director for trade innovation & solution development at Lloyds Bank, about efforts to remove legislative barriers to trade digitalisation and the potential impact of the UK’s landmark Electronic Trade Documents Act.

GTR Changemakers is a new podcast series from Global Trade Review’s editorial team, featuring in-depth interviews with the personalities behind some of the major shifts shaping the trade and trade finance industry.  

The UK's future border model

In the latest episode of GTR Changemakers, we speak with Alex Szymborski, CEO of Contained Technologies, one of the companies involved in the UK government’s Ecosystem of Trust project.

He outlines how the firm joined the initiative, which through various pilots, made supply chain data directly accessible to government agencies. The idea was to trial a future, digitally driven border model for the UK.

The benefits of connecting trusted upstream supply chain data to government bodies could be huge, potentially slashing delays by 80% and adding as much as £25bn to UK GDP, according to estimates. 

However, data duplication is a key problem area for global trade, particularly SMEs. 

Tackling the trade finance talent gap and ESG-linked SCF pricing

Introducing GTR Changemakers, the latest podcast from Global Trade Review’s editorial team, in which host Felix Thompson speaks in-depth with the personalities behind some of the major shifts in the industry.  

The series will feature a diverse range of interviewees from across the trade finance sector and will cover a variety of topics, not least digitalisation, the growth of ESG-focused products, as well as efforts to make trade finance an attractive sector to young professionals at the start of their careers.  

In this episode, GTR speaks with two of the finalists from ITFA’s emerging trade financier competition, Charlotte Russo and Ruby Zhou, about their award-winning projects and what motivated them to investigate their topics of choice.

Charlotte Russo delved into the long-standing issue of the trade finance talent gap and Ruby Zhou examined how greater uniformity and standards could be introduced into ESG-linked supply chain finance pricing.