Trade-finance controls are in place, but the risk view is fragmented.
Customer risk, country context, documents, goods and payments may sit with different teams and different systems. Each view is partial.
TRADE FINANCE & TRANSACTION BANKING ADVISORY
The transaction is documented. Is it understood?
Independent advisory on trade-finance risk, controls, payments and operating models.
A trade transaction can be internally consistent and still not tell the full story. The counterparties, the ownership behind them, the goods, the documents and the payment flows each carry part of the risk. We help institutions see the whole picture — and make the control between operations and compliance work.
WHERE WE ARE CALLED IN
The documents reconcile. The risk may not.
Documents are checked; the commercial logic is not fully tested.
A complete document set can still describe a transaction whose parties, purpose, timing or payment route do not fit the wider picture.
Operations and compliance see different parts of the same transaction.
Operations sees movement, amendments, discrepancies and timing. Compliance sees customer and country risk. Neither view is complete alone.
Processes have grown around exceptions.
When workarounds become routine, the control that exists on paper may not be the control that operates. We help teams see where friction is producing risk.
OUR SCOPE
The whole transaction, not one document at a time.
- Trade-finance operations and controls
- Trade-based financial crime and TBML risk
- Transaction review and escalation
- Payments and cash management
- Corporate transaction banking
- Operating-model design
- Process improvement
- Collaboration across the three lines
OUR APPROACH
Read the transaction as a chain.
See the whole chain
Bring counterparties, ownership, goods, documents and payments into one view. Look for what does not reconcile — and for explanations that close the question too quickly.
Bring the two views together
Operations and compliance do not need the same information. They need a shared understanding of what matters, when to escalate and what happens next.
Test the control in practice
Walk through real work: the exceptions, the amendments, the queues and the judgement calls. A control that teams route around is not a control.
Make the change hold
Clarify ownership, decision rights, escalation and evidence. Improve the operating model without adding friction that invites a new workaround.
QUESTIONS WE CAN HELP ANSWER
Where the transaction, the control and the organisation meet.
- Do our trade-finance controls test the commercial logic, not only document completeness?
- Can operations and compliance explain the same transaction in the same way?
- Where do ownership, goods, documents and payments stop reconciling?
- Which exceptions are tolerated as normal, and what risk sits behind them?
- How should the operating model change without adding friction that teams will route around?