The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) has hired four senior people in its Asian transaction banking team.

Azim Walli has been named head of trade and supply chain finance products for Asia and Oceania. He will set the strategy for the entire operation out of Singapore. He recently joined BTMU from Australian bank ANZ, where he held various roles including global head of payments finance and regional head of trade and supply chain products. He previously worked with Credit Suisse and RBC.

Meetu Singh is now head of global corporate sales for the region, a role she began late in 2015. She joined the bank from DBS in New York where she held various positions in the transaction banking team. She has also worked with JP Morgan and HSBC.

Sudhamsh Cheekoty started in his new position as senior vice president, trade finance product, in December and will report to Walli. Meanwhile, Paul van Sint Fiet recently joined as senior vice-president, global corporate sales, reporting to Singh.

As other banks appear to be winding down or scaling back operations, BTMU has been pursuing what general manager Ken Stratton describes as an “aggressive” expansionary policy. He continues: “We have made great inroads in building our business, especially over the last two years, in which we rolled out many new product solutions and delivery channels including Comsuite, a proprietary online global transaction banking platform offering a suite of cash management and trade finance solutions.”

He adds: “We are gaining market share and I believe with the expertise of Azim, Meetu, Sudhamsh and Paul, who have a combined of close to 75 years of experience in transaction banking across the globe, we will be in a position to leapfrog our competitors to become the preferred transaction banking partner for both Japanese and global corporates by 2020.”

The bank’s Asia and Oceania transaction banking unit has been in existence since 2012, helping increase total trade finance revenues by 60% per year for the past two years.