Trade Ledger Launches In Europe To Take Advantage Of Open Banking

Australia-based Trade Ledger is launching its open banking and lending platform for corporates in Europe, the company announced Tuesday (July 3).

Trade Ledger operates an open banking platform for banks to assess lending risk to their corporate customers in real time. The solution aims to facilitate trade finance in particular, the company noted. The firm is setting up its EU headquarters in London and brought on a new Chief Innovation Officer Roger Vincent to lead the company’s European expansion. Vincent previously served as Head of Innovation at Equifax U.K. where he spearheaded the firm’s open banking strategy, Trade Ledger said.

Launching in Europe will enable Trade Ledger to take advantage of the market’s open banking regulatory initiatives, the firm added. According to Trade Ledger CEO and Co-founder Martin McCann, the expansion is part of the firm’s “Born Global” strategy, adding that new talent will “help us take advantage of huge opportunities, created by impending regulatory changes that are driving the pace of bank transformation into tech-driven business models, such as General Data Protection Regulation, open banking, and the Revised Payment Service Directive. It’s a perfect storm of opportunities for a corporate banking credit platform like us.”

According to Vincent, while the European market has experienced significant disruption in retail banking, thanks to regulatory reform, small business banking is only starting to see the same market shifts.

In January, Trade Ledger said it would be collaborating in Australia with Switzerland-based alternative lending platform Tradeplus24. Trade Ledger links its infrastructure into Tradeplus24 to support underwriting of small business receivables finance, the companies explained at the time, with Trade Ledger assessing supply chain and invoice data to mitigate risk.

“A major problem for banks and other lenders across the globe is the cost, effort and perceived higher risk of loan origination in the SME sector in particular,” McCann said at the time. “This sector has long been plagued by outdated credit assessment technologies that prevent lenders from easily or cost-effectively acquiring real-time information about persistent risk, individual transactions or trade document updates.”