GLEIF Supports World Trade Board Plan to Empower SMEs Through Trade and Finance

Basel – The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has contributed to the World Trade Board’s new plan to drive greater access to trade finance for MSMEs, the Financial Inclusion in Trade Roadmap. Launched today for consultation, the plan identifies five key areas where coordinated action can make a significant impact. Crucially, the Roadmap aims to accelerate the pace of change by providing a holistic framework for public and private sector collaboration.

MSMEs make up around 90% of businesses globally but accounted for just 23% of applications for trade finance in 2020. Despite their low representation, these smaller firms made up 40% of rejected trade finance applications. This mismatch between demand for and supply of trade financing, known as the trade finance gap, is growing rapidly – from an estimated $1.5 trillion in 2018 to $2 trillion in 2022, and shows no signs of slowing.

Michael Vrontamitis, Deputy Chair of the World Trade Board, said: “Difficulty accessing finance means MSMEs are greatly under-represented in global trade. Many good ideas to increase financial inclusion have been put into action, but to accelerate progress we need to harness the knowledge and technology available to us into collective action. Our framework aligns diverse stakeholders towards a common vision, with clear lines of responsibility in a results-driven approach. We now invite the industry to provide feedback that will improve the Roadmap, then partner with us on implementation.”

The absence of a universal system of business identity is severely limiting the growth potential of MSMEs everywhere. Without robust business credentials, MSMEs face a variety of significant barriers: their access to finance, particularly to trade finance, is either severely limited or denied altogether, and their capacity to establish contractual domestic and international trading partnerships is constrained. Even gaining access to payment services is a challenge. A crucial step to increasing financial inclusion is to encourage broad MSME adoption of a trusted, globally recognized system for business identity. The Global LEI System is one such system. It gives banks, financial institutions, potential business partners and other regulated institutions easy access to an MSME’s key legal reference data. Once registered, an MSME can be recognized universally, since its data is openly available electronically, free of charge, to anyone, anywhere.

“By opening up cross-border trading opportunities to more MSMEs, the LEI can be seen as a critical – and immediately available – tool in the drive to create a much broader and more competitive supply chain for businesses worldwide,” comments Clare Rowley, Head of Business Operations, GLEIF. “Additionally, using a single global identifier can bring greater transparency and utility to supply chain relationships, both of which are critical components in sustainable supply chain monitoring and reporting. The result of greater financial inclusion among MSMEs will be a stronger, more diverse, transparent, and competitive environment for global trade.”

Writing in the Roadmap’s foreword, Pascal Lamy, Coordinator of the Jacques Delors Think Tanks, President of the Paris Peace Forum and Strategic Advisor to the World Trade Board, notes: “When it comes to the gaps in the provision of trade finance, no commercial bank or multilateral institution can address these [challenges] on their own. They need to find new ways of partnering with each other, with governments and with other innovative organisations to deliver their expertise.” To this end, the Financial Inclusion in Trade Roadmap suggests actions in five key areas which can be seen along with additional information here.