Resilience redraws the trade finance map

As trade corridors shift across Central and Eastern Europe and beyond, banks, multilaterals and insurers are adapting their products, technology and risk appetite to help companies build more resilient supply chains.

At the ITFA Annual Conference 2026 last month in Split, Croatia, the session “Trade routes reimagined: Opportunities beyond CEE” examined how global trade is being fundamentally restructured rather than merely adjusted at the margins. Speakers from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Raiffeisenbank Croatia and Howden explored the emergence of new trade corridors and the financing needed to support them.

The discussion brought together Shona Tatchell, director of the EBRD’s Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP); Liana Keserić, CEO of Raiffeisenbank Croatia; and Richard Waite of Howden. Across their different perspectives, one conclusion stood out: efficiency remains important, but resilience, flexibility and risk-sharing now shape trade decisions just as strongly.

New corridors follow investment

Tatchell said the EBRD is seeing trade routes develop in real time across its expanding region, which stretches from Mongolia through Central Asia and the Caucasus, across Türkiye and the Middle East, and increasingly into sub-Saharan Africa. Growth along the Middle Corridor is supported by physical investment in ports, railways, and other logistics infrastructure. China’s Belt and Road investment, she noted, has produced tangible infrastructure that is now carrying trade flows and creating financing demand.

Other routes are also strengthening: between Central Asia and Türkiye, across the Mediterranean into Europe, and from sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa. Intraregional business is particularly important to the EBRD. Tatchell pointed to growing flows between Türkiye, Greece and the Balkans, as well as links involving Egypt and Ukraine.

The EBRD supports these flows through the Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP), which Tatchell heads, working with 143 partner banks across its countries of operation. It issues guarantees in favour of confirming banks that provide cross-border credit, while also supplying liquidity where required. As open-account trade grows, the programme is extending more support to factoring facilities offered both by banks and independent factoring companies. Tatchell said the TFP supported more than €4.6bn of trade finance last year.

From optimisation to adaptability

For Croatian businesses, Keserić described a clear shift from pure supply-chain optimisation towards adaptability. Companies still seek efficiency and lower costs, but are less willing to depend on a single supplier, market or route.

The change is visible in several sectors. Automotive-component manufacturers are sourcing closer to production markets, diversifying suppliers and placing greater emphasis on end-to-end visibility and shorter lead times. Electrical equipment and machinery companies, already closely integrated into European supply chains, are working more with regional suppliers and logistics partners while digitalising procurement and shipment tracking. In food and pharmaceuticals, reliability, continuity of supply and improved demand forecasting carry particular weight.

Across Raiffeisen Bank International’s regional network, this is creating demand for multi-country and multi-supplier structures for the same customer, rather than isolated, single-country trade lines. The bank’s regional footprint is therefore becoming a product in its own right: it allows the institution to follow a customer’s supply chain as that chain moves.

Risk moves to the foreground

The role of the commercial bank is expanding accordingly. Traditional payment and counterparty risk remain critical, but banks must now ask whether goods can be delivered or received at all. Performance and delivery risk, logistics disruption, sanctions and dual-use screening, cyber threats and data integrity have all become central to due diligence.

Clients are also asking for more than letters of credit and guarantees. They increasingly want supply chain finance for suppliers, advice on entering new markets, receivables monetisation and connections to export credit agencies. Keserić argued that financing itself is rarely the hardest question. Banks know how to structure funding once they understand the risks and the commercial relationship. The better starting point is therefore a detailed conversation about what could go wrong and what the client actually needs.

Insurance is moving through the same transition. Waite said credit and political risk insurance can unlock both liquidity and capital, allowing banks to support transactions that would otherwise fall outside their appetite. Although a transaction may begin with a trade credit or political risk policy, insurance can support a much wider spectrum, from trade and structured finance to asset finance and capital markets.

Keserić described insurance as moving from the background to the front of the client discussion. When a Croatian exporter enters a higher-risk market for the first time, combining bank finance with buyer credit insurance or export credit agency cover can make longer payment terms and unfamiliar counterparties commercially viable.

Digital infrastructure must work end to end

Digitalisation is now essential infrastructure rather than an optional service upgrade. Keserić said automation has reduced the time needed to issue some guarantees from several days to a matter of hours. Customer onboarding and much of the customer journey have also become digital, although documentary requirements continue to slow letters of credit and other paper-intensive products.

Tatchell cautioned that individual bank platforms are only one part of the solution. Digital identities, enabling legislation, interoperable systems and digital customs processes form the public rails on which private solutions must run. A transaction loses much of its benefit if it proceeds digitally until it reaches a port or customs authority and must then return to paper.

To help banks with different resources and levels of expertise, the EBRD has established a TFP Innovation Lab bringing together partner banks, technology companies and consultants. Its purpose is to help institutions identify whether they need a complete trade platform or targeted components, understand the investment required and test available technologies.

Green and blue finance broaden the opportunity

Sustainability remains closely connected to both trade resilience and energy security. Tatchell said the EBRD’s green trade activity uses financial incentives to change purchasing behaviour. Transactions involving certified commodities or equipment that reduces carbon emissions, water use or hazardous chemical consumption can qualify for lower guarantee pricing and, in some cases, longer tenors.

For Mediterranean markets, Keserić highlighted growing demand for blue finance, including investment that protects marine environments and helps coastal industries transition. What banks once struggled to define and structure is increasingly being requested directly by customers.

The debate over energy security reinforces this agenda rather than displacing it. Diversified and decentralised renewable generation can reduce dependence on a single geography or fuel source. Tatchell pointed to wind and solar investment as part of Ukraine’s reconstruction, arguing that transition finance should be treated as a mainstream economic and security priority.

Collaboration converts risk into trade

The greatest opportunities may come from combining regional knowledge, insurance capacity, multilateral guarantees and digital infrastructure. For Croatia, Keserić identified pharmaceuticals and food processing exports to the Gulf and North Africa, together with reconstruction-related trade flows linking Croatian and South-East European construction expertise to Ukraine.

Waite encouraged banks and corporates in central and Eastern Europe to test the insurance market more actively as they move into Central Asia, Africa and other less familiar destinations. Political risk demand has risen sharply as geopolitical uncertainty has intensified, but insurance capacity can still help institutions take well-structured risks rather than retreat from new markets.

According to Tatchell, the scale of both the opportunity and the risk makes collaboration indispensable. Multilateral development banks, commercial banks, insurers, brokers and technology providers each hold only part of the answer. Working together can turn emerging corridors into financeable trade, while investment in digital capabilities and the energy transition will determine which institutions – and which markets – move ahead.

Source: itfa.org