Trade finance veteran Daniel Cotti has left Marco Polo Network, GTR can reveal.

Cotti has been with the blockchain trade finance consortium since its inception in 2017, most recently as managing director, centre of excellence banking and trade. His trade finance experience spans four decades, with roles at, among others, JP Morgan, Citibank, ABN Amro and RBS. He was also chair of the board of Bolero prior to its sale to WiseTech Global earlier this year.

Cotti tells GTR that he now intends to focus on trade consulting and digital trade as a service, with a particular emphasis on documentary trade. To achieve this, he will leverage Cotti Trade & Treasury (CTT), an advisory service for the trade finance and treasury management industry that he established in 2015.

“The ambition is to create a globally distributed trade digitalisation practice that functions as a consultancy hub,” he says, adding that he is bringing together a “global network of trade experts that subscribe to the vision of digitising the trade business and who have deep trade and digitalisation knowledge and experience.”

Cotti says that CTT is in the process of forging partnership agreements with a number of “global trade experts”, whose names are yet to be revealed.

“Our ambition is to find scalable win-win scenarios for fully automated and integrated documentary trade solutions leveraging digital payment undertakings, data matching and an integrated service model that benefit corporates by addressing their key pain points,” he says, adding that “as a shareholder and a close friend I will stay involved and connected with the Marco Polo Network team.”

As of press time, Marco Polo Network had not responded to GTR’s emailed request for comment. GTR understands that there are no plans to seek a replacement for Cotti’s role.