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Five financial institutions have signed up as pioneer members of a new electronic platform for the distribution of trade and supply chain finance and working capital assets.

CCRManager, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tin Hill Capital developed with the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), was launched in Singapore today.

Bank of China, DBS Bank, ICICI Bank, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, and UniCredit have joined the platform as initial members. In addition, ANZ, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BBVA, Bank of East Asia, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho, Standard Chartered and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have all signed a letter of intent to become a member of CCRManager within the next few months.

“It’s a platform that supports banks to succeed by enabling syndication and distribution through technology,” CCRManager CEO Ka-Kit Man told GTR at the start of the year, in a report that gave readers a heads-up on the launch of the new platform.

The web-based platform helps FIs buy and sell debt instruments to optimise their balance sheets for capital and credit relief and liquidity.

The system is designed to make it more efficient to reach out to as many potential buyers as sellers choose, as well as track in a real-time, visible and auditable way, provide pricing transparency and compare the offers received on a transaction.

As such, banks using the platform are able to manage the entire process of distributing trade finance internationally to other banks, credit insurers, and fund managers.

“Users of CCRManager will be able to list assets for distribution, negotiate deals and manage supporting documentation in a secure environment. They will also have access to tools for data analytics, market benchmarking, and pricing indices. In addition, CCRManager will provide users with the ability to manage their portfolio, reporting and compliance activities 24 hours a day,” reads a release from the company.

It’s a cradle-to-grave approach to distribution, Man told GTR. “When you sell an asset, that is not the end of the process – you need to manage paying the fees, releasing your investors: there are many additional steps after the sell. And this goes for when there’s a non-payment situation too. The system keeps track of when the asset is sold, all the way to when it is paid – or even a default situation.”

It is hoped that the increase in productivity and transparency will help to attract new investors into trade finance and give banks more capacity to originate new trade finance lending.

Speaking at the launch, Man comments on the platform’s target market: “We estimate that the secondary market for trade finance assets at approximately US$1.7tn is roughly 10% of global cross-border trade. As an infrastructure platform, we believe that CCRManager will address this entire market, help unlock more capital and increase the supply of trade finance globally.”

Francisco Javier Fernández de Troconiz, head of global trade and international banking at BBVA, calls CCRManager a “potential benchmark platform for the trade finance distribution industry”. “It is also well aligned with BBVA’s digital strategy,” he says.

Surath Sengupta, global head of trade portfolio management at HSBC, adds: “HSBC welcomes innovations that can help drive safe, sustainable, and profitable trade growth. We believe that this kind of digital platform will help meet trade financing needs globally and give more investors access to relatively low-risk assets. We are also delighted to be part of another great collaboration between banks and fintechs.”

CCRManager was set up over a period of 12 months through a combination of market engagement workgroups, consultative workshops, and industry expert reviews conducted with leading trade finance institutions globally.

Fees are charged on a transactional basis. CCRM manager chairman Tan Kah Chye told GTR last year that costs are “competitive”. “The charges are low and we recoup our investment through volume,” he said.

System testing of the platform is currently taking place simultaneously across 14 countries.