Thomson Reuters Partners On Trade Finance Marketplace App

Thomson Reuters is teaming up with Seabury Capital to guide its trade finance operations into Asia, the companies revealed in a press release Monday (Sept. 17).

Seabury Capital trade finance unit Seabury TFX will be working with Thomson Reuters to enter the Asia market. Together, they will launch a new marketplace app, dubbed the Receivables Board, to support primary and secondary trading of accounts receivable by institutional investors and corporate treasurers, enabling businesses to access trade finance. The platform also aims to establish a network of “qualified corporates and investors,” the firms said.

“The partnership between Thomson Reuters and Seabury TFX is addressing the challenge associated with liquidity of corporate receivables that many companies around the world are facing today,” said Seabury Capital Asset Management and Global Head of Specialists Funds and Financial Solutions Chief Executive Officer Margaret L. Chan in a statement. “There is a significant focus on utilizing open technology standards to spur the transparency and innovation to provide the flexibility which the trade finance industry increasingly needs to remain competitive in a complex, global business landscape.”

The Receivables Board app will launch on Thomson Reuters’ Elkon platform, according to Thomson Reuters Head of Asia Customer Proposition Stuart Brown. The tool will integrate Thomson Reuters’ World-Check and FXall solutions to provide Know Your Customer compliance and foreign exchange management features.

In their announcement, the firms pointed to Asian Development Bank findings that today’s trade finance gap now stands at an estimated $1.6 trillion. At the same time, corporate treasurers in an “expensive, high-risk low return” market are facing heightened pressures to manage working capital.

Earlier this year Thomson Reuters partnered with SAP to support joint corporate customers’ cross-border payments needs. Their integration sees SAP add Thomson Reuters data into its Market Rates Management solution, allowing corporate treasurers to gain visibility into the cost of a global transaction in a single currency.