The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has appointed Sunil Mascarenhas as supply chain finance (SCF) relationship manager, as it seeks to build out its SCF offering.

Mascarenhas joins from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he led supply chain finance advisory in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Mongolia. Prior to that he led various positions at HSBC in India and Malaysia in the areas of SCF commercial banking, operational risk and financial crime risk.

Reporting to Steven Beck, head of trade and supply chain finance, Mascarenhas will be based in Manila, where he will leverage his experience in providing advisory services to banks to drive adoption of SCF across the region.

Speaking about his short to medium-term plans in his new role, Mascarenhas tells GTR: “ADB has strong existing relationships with a number of partner financial institutions (PFI) in our markets for trade facilitation programmes. This forms a significant catchment population for us to target the deployment and growth of SCF programmes. My view is that ADB should play a leading role in deploying technical assistance to our PFI population especially in markets where SCF is either not existent or just being developed.” He also plans to explore the use of technology – particularly blockchain – in SCF and how it can be leveraged to reach the hitherto ignored smaller participants in a corporate supply chain.

“We’re excited to have Sunil join the team,” says Beck. “He has the ideal mix of experience to help scale our business.  He’s worked with international and local emerging market banks, in origination as well as operational risk.  He’s personable and I’m confident our clients will enjoy working with him.”