Digital trade finance firm Modifi has appointed Matthias Hendrichs, a former regional head at Apple, to its executive team. 

Hendrichs joined the Berlin-headquartered fintech as chief commercial officer on May 2, completing its four-person executive team alongside co-founders Nelson Holzner, Sven Brauer and Jan Wehrs. 

He was formerly head of Asia Pacific for Apple’s app store, payment and commerce business, a Hong Kong-based role he held since May 2018.

He previously held a series of digitisation and transformation roles in varied sectors, including at luxury goods multinational LVMH and management consultancy Gao Feng. He was also head of the energy and chemicals practice at Booz & Company, now part of PwC. 

Now based in Berlin, Hendrichs is tasked with ensuring Modifi continues to grow, and has oversight of its commercial operations in its three historically largest markets – China, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates – as well as Bangladesh, Pakistan, the UK and Germany, and boosting its expansion into the Netherlands and US. 

Chief executive Holzner says Hendrichs is expected to help Modifi “build the leading global commerce platform for business payments and trade management”. 

In December last year, the company secured US$145mn in debt financing from two existing bank partners – Silicon Valley Bank and Solarisbank – to be used to build out a digital trade finance platform. 

The platform aims to help Modifi’s customer base of small and medium-sized enterprises manage and centralise all trade-related activities, including tracking shipments and managing risk. 

The company is also backed by Maersk, GFC, Picus Capital, Intesa Sanpaolo and Heliad.