Introducing the Conference Speakers in Edinburgh – ”Trade Finance Insurance” panel session

With the ITFA Annual Conference fast approaching, the ITFA Board is excited to announce that registrations are steadily flowing in. To register on-line, to view the conference programme and for any other informative details, please click here.

At this year’s ITFA Annual Conference, Geoffrey Wynne – Sullivan & Worcester, will chair the Panel discussion titled ‘‘Trade Finance Insurance”. The rest of the panel will consist of Huw Owen – Liberty Specialty Markets, Robert Nijhout – International Credit Insurance & Surety Association (ICISA), Volker Handrich – Swiss Re Corporate Solutions and Irene Port – UniCredit Bank AG.

During the ITFA 44th Annual Trade and Forfaiting Conference, which is being held in Edinburgh between the 6-8 September 2017, Geoff will moderate a panel of experts from different areas of the market who will discuss various ways of achieving credit risk mitigation. He and they will compare and contrast credit insurance, guarantees, risk participations, surety bonds and other risk sharing techniques. It should be a lively and informative session.

Geoffrey Wynne is the head of Sullivan & Worcester’s London office and also head of its Trade & Export Finance Group. He has extensive experience in banking and finance, specifically trade and structured trade and commodity finance, corporate and international finance, asset and project finance, syndicated lending, equipment leasing and workouts and financing restructuring. Geoff is one of the leading trade finance lawyers and has advised extensively many of the major trade finance banks, multilateral financers and companies around the world on trade and commodity transactions in virtually every emerging market. Geoff sits on the editorial boards of a number of publications and is a regular contributor and speaker at conferences. In Chambers and Partners 2015, Geoff is ranked a Tier 1 lawyer for Commodities: Trade Finance. He recently received a Fellowship award from TFR for his work in trade finance.

Huw Owen is Head of London Markets – Global Financial Risk at Liberty Specialty Markets. Liberty’s Global Financial Risk team provides insurance solutions to corporate and financial institutions. Huw has been an underwriter in the Credit and Political Risk market for over 15 years and prior to insurance he worked for a foreign policy think tank and as an international election observer.  He has a B.A. in War Studies and a M.A. in International Relations both from King’s College London.  Huw is a member of the ITFA Insurance Committee.

Robert Nijhout is ICISA’s Executive Director. He joined the association in 2001, after a 20-year career at NCM, now part of Atradius, where he held various positions, including Marketing Director, Executive Vice President and Head of the London office. Rob has a law degree from Radboud University of Nijmegen and currently lives in Amsterdam. He is a frequent speaker and panel member at international conferences. His scope of expertise includes trade credit insurance and surety as well as industry topics such as Solvency II, accounting standards and level playing field for trade credit and surety.

Volker Handrich, a German citizen born on 21^st November 1964, has a law degree from the University of Konstanz, Germany. He joined the reinsurance industry in 1991 with Aachen Re which was acquired in 1995 by GE Insurance Solutions which since 2006 is part of Swiss Re Group. He had various underwriting roles in P&C reinsurance before he became, in 2005, Head of the Bank Trade Finance Team of GE Insurance Solutions (founded in 1998) and today is Head of the “Trade & Supply Chain Finance” unit (being part of BT&I) of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.

The final person on the panel is Irene Port, who joined HypoVereinsbank (now UniCredit) in 1986. As of 1991 she worked as a specialist in the foreign trade department in Munich. In 1996 she was transferred to Trade Risk Management and was the Deputy Head of UniCredit Group Center of Competence for Forfaiting Financial Institutions and Secondary Market from 2007. Irene also worked for UniCredit’s Trade Finance Unit in Singapore (between 1998 and 2007) and New York (1997) and moved to Hong Kong in July 2011 where she took over the function as Head of Trade Finance and Services Asia Pacific. As from March 2015 she returned to Munich to take up the position as Global Head of Trade Risk Management to focus on the secondary market activities of the bank. She holds a bachelor of business science of the Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakedemie, Munich.

We look forward to this discussion and to welcoming Geoff and the rest of the panel in Edinburgh!