Lionel Taylor has been appointed chief operating officer of China Export Finance (CEF). Taylor joins CEF from The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), where he was head of trade and supply chain, with responsibility for the performance and development of international trade.

A leading figure in supply chain finance, Taylor is well known for his innovative strategies in the industry. Over the past few years he has spent much time in China, working with Chinese suppliers and their Western buyers. He also sat on RBS’ corporate markets steering committee for cooperation with the Bank of China.

Lionel has over 25 years’ receivables finance and international trade experience at senior management and director levels with major European and US financial institutions. Before joining RBS, he was at a division of Citibank where he developed the bank’s supply chain finance platform and business. This was preceded by a period at Rabobank, where he developed their pan-European factoring business. Before that he was a founder of RBS factoring.

CEF is an international trade finance provider offering financial support to Chinese exporters to Western markets. Taylor will have responsibility for operations, credit, risk management and product strategy.

Karl Alomar, chief executive of CEF, says that Taylor is “a great advocate of progressive evolution of trade finance and has been at the forefront of the development of original financial supply chain thinking”.