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TRADE FINANCE REGISTRY

The Trade Finance Registry (TFR) is a national banking industry utility designed to enhance the transparency and integrity of trade finance transactions across banks in Singapore. The TFR will serve as a central utility for all trade finance transactions that are financed by banks in Singapore.

ABS is the owner of the TFR with Banking Computer Services Private Limited (BCS), a subsidiary of NETS group, as the TFR Operator.

The financial industry and MAS are fully supportive of this initiative. Nearly 40 banks have joined the TFR.

TFR was conceived to address informational asymmetry to better detect and mitigate duplicate financing, particularly in commodity trade, and especially with regard to the detection and mitigation of trade fraud.

With a common data exchange network/utility for trade finance among the banks in Singapore, a bank will now be better equipped to identify transactions that were being financed simultaneously by multiple banks and mitigate trade fraud.

The key objectives of TFR are to improve transparency of transactions and bridge the information asymmetry among banks to:

  • detect multiple financing and

  • validate genuineness of trade; by leveraging technology using APIs to connect to SGTraDex to request information from source e.g., shipping companies on Bills of Lading issuances

With the TFR, banks will have greater confidence in financing trade transactions as they will be assured that these transactions can be checked to prevent multiple financing. In future, the TFR’s effectiveness will be further enhanced when it is connected to similar systems in other foreign jurisdictions, enabling the TFR to capture offshore transactions made outside of Singapore.

industry guidelines

#12-08, MAS Building

10 Shenton Way, Singapore 079117

Tel: (65) 6224 4300 / Fax: (65) 6224 1785

Email: banks@abs.org.sg

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