The GTR Directory brings together more than 2,000 key contacts across financial institutions and advisory, legal, asset and fund management, credit and political risk insurance, fintech and trade tech, and support services.

The directory is the most widely used reference tool in the global trade finance space, with a readership numbering 35,000+ across 100 countries. Deutsche Bank has been lead sponsor since its inception more than 20 years ago.

This year’s edition features a foreword by Atul Jain and Oliver Resovac, Global Co-Heads of Trade Finance & Lending at Deutsche Bank, who reflect on a trade landscape defined by fragmentation, new opportunities, and the need for greater alignment across the industry.

In their foreword, Jain and Resovac describe how shifting geopolitical dynamics and rising protectionism are reshaping global commerce. The US ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcements of April 2025, they note, “heralded both a sharp rise in tariffs and the start of yet another volatile and unpredictable time for global trade.”

With supply chains redefined by tariffs and resource nationalism, “it is no surprise that intra-regional trade is increasing while trade among what the IMF terms ‘geopolitically distant’ countries is declining at rates not seen since the start of the Cold War.” The IMF warns that such fragmentation could shave up to 7% off global GDP – a reminder of how costly decoupling can be in an era when goods trade now accounts for 45% of global output, up from just 16% at the start of the Cold War.¹

Yet amid this disruption, new areas of opportunity are emerging. The rise of data centres and artificial intelligence, renewed investment in defence and deterrence, and the push for renewable energy and housing infrastructure combine in creating “an explosion of future demand for critical commodities and reliable supply chains” – and the trade finance solutions to support them.

Against this backdrop, Jain and Resovac call for closer alignment across the trade finance ecosystem. “We as a trade finance community need to be more aligned than ever,” they write, urging collaboration between banks, insurers, non-bank financial institutions and corporates to strengthen risk management and funding channels.

They also stress the importance of accelerating digital adoption, cautioning that “vertical, proprietary proofs-of-concept do not themselves move the industry forward,” and commending the International Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to drive scalable, interoperable digital trade finance solutions.

Looking ahead, markets are unlikely to cast off the unpredictability that has defined 2025 so far. Despite this, Jain and Resovac remain “quietly confident that growth will continue, and that the resilience of trade finance – thanks to its exemplary record of low defaults – will hold.”

Amid the noise of digital information and geopolitical uncertainty, they conclude, the GTR Directory remains a tangible, trusted reference point for global trade: “[It’s] quite literally like having the world in your hands – and, as far as trade finance is concerned, that is how we believe it should be.”

The online version of the GTR Directory can be found here. Printed copies are distributed at all GTR conferences, plus many other industry events.

Sources

¹ See imf.org