OREANDA-NEWS. Sberbank has won the nomination for Best Trade Bank in Russia and the CIS during the Trade & Forfaiting Review1 (TFR) Excellence Awards.

Winners of TFR Excellence Awards are selected by members of the international business community, which includes leading economists, heads of organizations and financial institutions and trade finance experts.

This is not the first award this year to recognize Sberbank’s achievements in this business area. In 2015 Sberbank was also named the top trade finance bank in Russia and the CIS by a leading financial magazine – Global Finance. In addition, Sberbank is the market leader in issuing local letters of credit, according to a survey by the rating agency Expert RA (February 2015).

Sberbank continues to increase its activity in the area of trade finance in Russia and in other countries where the Group is present, helping clients to work through business challenges and develop new solutions for the changing macroeconomic and geopolitical situation. “Sberbank is developing business on the local market by offering new products for local trade participants; the first deal for financing payments with local letters of credit took place in 2015,” pointed out Andrey Ivanov, Senior Managing Director, Head of Trade Finance and Correspondence Relations Division at Sberbank CIB2. Sberbank has formed one of the largest portfolios of deals with insurance coverage from the Export Insurance Agency of Russia (EXIAR) through supporting growing demand from Russian exporters of capital goods. At present the total volume of completed deals has exceeded $380 mln.

Interest in Commodity Trade Finance among Sberbank Group clients is growing. This product is intended for Russian commodity exporters and is implemented on the platform of Sberbank’s subsidiary bank in Switzerland.

The continued strengthening of connections between Russia and China and growth in trade volumes between the two countries has opened new opportunities for trade finance. Sberbank signed an agreement with leading lending institutions in China worth a total of more than 10 bln yuan, which has allowed the bank to begin issuing letters of credit in yuan. “We are optimistic about the prospects of future cooperation with Chinese companies and Sberbank’s growing opportunities to finance its clients foreign trade operations with Chinese partners,” Andrey Invanov added.

The main products driving growth in this area for Sberbank include servicing trade flow within Russia using letters of credit (including with financing and deferred payment), financing trade with China, issuing import letters of credit with post-financing and deferred payment, long-term financing for import with the participation of ECAs, financing commodity exports, as well as the supply of Russian capital goods in other markets with EXIAR coverage.

In 2014 Sberbank Group completed trade finance and documentary business deals worth $47 bln, including $36 bln for Sberbank. Sberbank Group’s trade finance portfolio amounted to $15 bln in 2014. In 2014 the number of local letters of credit reached a record RUB 170 bln, and in the first half of 2015 amounted to RUB 103 bln, exceeding the figure for the same period last year by 49%.