Chris Hyde and Jaime Gimeno have left Swedish fintech company Mitigram to found Avant Trade Solutions, a trade finance advisory firm.

The firm will help corporates and banks navigate the rapidly expanding fintech domain, while also helping fintech firms steer the complex world of trade finance.

Speaking to GTR, Hyde, previously Mitigram’s chief commercial officer, says that working in fintech in Sweden over the past two years, he saw an ever-increasing number of new solutions, platforms and technologies for digitising trade, which often caused confusion for corporates.

“Many corporates asked me: ‘Why can’t someone just come up with an end-to-end solution? A complex area as trade is, now we are dealing with all these providers that are telling us that they have got the best solution, but only for one part of the process’,” he explains.

That was how the idea for Avant Trade Solutions came about. The company will help businesses select and integrate the right fintech providers to best meet their needs, ultimately providing them with an end-to-end solution.

It will also offer advisory services for importing and exporting organisations on the structuring of trade finance products as well as provide training for staff to better understand the products, the risks and negotiate the best outcome for the business.

The advisory firm will initially focus on the Nordics, particularly on companies exporting to the Mena and Asia regions.

Hyde (pictured) says he felt he could add more value as an independent advisor rather than staying at Mitigram, a fintech company which offers a web-based service where trade finance players can connect and collaborate on the financing and risk coverage of trade.

“Avant has evolved because of a need,” he says. “I’ve seen it as a banker, as an importer and working in the fintech industry: the pitfalls are just so many and people run away from these things because trade is such a complex area. Someone needs to put this all together.”

Together with Gimeno, previously head of business solutions at Mitigram, the two founders have more than 26 years of experience working with trade finance in various regions around the world.

Hyde previously worked as the managing director of A&C Exclusive Distributors and before that he was the global head of commodity and trade finance at ANZ.

Before joining Mitigram, Gimeno worked at Clearstream, a post-trade services provider, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank.

“Jamie comes more from a product/IT background, so more in the digitisation space, while my background is in the trade space: we were a natural fit,” Hyde says.