Analyse de l'impact du "compliance" et de la gestion des risques sur le "trade finance" : comment les sociétés exportatrices et importatrices belges peuvent-elles faciliter leurs transactions internationales dans le climat actuel des affaires ?

Abstract

Executive summary

Taking its source near the XVth century, trade finance can be described as an activity of financing, securitizing and managing international trade transactions. In today’s world and even if the financial crisis of 2008 has been rough, trade finance remains an important activity in the financial system and also for the economy. This activity has been considered as one of the most secured and profitable businesses for banks. Nevertheless, since a few years, trade finance has been suffering from the strengthening of the banking regulations. Apart from the Basel Accords, the regulation concerning the compliance made it difficult for banks to finance all the international transactions. Moreover, a consequence of the financial crisis has been that banks reinforce their approach in terms of risk management. This document presents trade finance as a whole and helps to understand the issues of these strengthening of compliance and risk management. According to these two aspects, a strategy of trade activity financing has been delivered. The first part of this thesis analyzes the compliance regulation and the international sanctions according to the activity of trade finance. Four important points linked to these regulations/sanctions have been discussed: the anti-money laundering and the terrorism financing, the embargo, the corruption and the politic. The second part presents the advantages for companies to orient themselves through international. Moreover, it analyzes a transaction of trade finance in its totality with the different stages and the different actors of an international transaction, their role and the risks to take into account for both stages. Finally, a description of the different financial ways of financing and hedging against the risks has been included in order to explain the pros and the cons of each. The third and last part describes the steps that can be taken to be in respect to the compliance regulations and a strategy to adopt in order to finance an international transaction.

Key words: trade finance, compliance, international sanctions, risk management, hedging, strategy for international financing