By Mike Dimelow at Accelerated Ventures

The global trade finance market is worth $12trn USD annually, which is largely funded by banks and currently isn’t an investable asset class for institutions.

Tradeteq’s founding team want to change all that through an AI-driven marketplace platform which opens up trade finance to a more diverse set of companies than traditional credit scoring models do.

A platform approach to trade finance can remove the friction currently preventing institutional investment at scale and enable fast growing internationally focused SME/SMB’s to access competitively-priced finance.

Initially the marketplace connects trade finance originators with institutional investors and provides them with an arena to interact and transact efficiently. Machine learning is used to deliver advanced credit analytics and reporting, making trade finance asset investment transparent and scalable.

Since launch in 2016, $150m of assets have been processed through Tradeteq’s platform – resulting in Wealth and Finance Magazine naming it ‘Best Trade Finance Collaboration Network 2018’.

This is a huge opportunity and a space that Tradeteq’s founding team have years of world-leading trading experience within and are ready to redefine the industry. We’re really excited to play a small part in this big mission!

Christoph Gugelmann, co-founder and CEO of Tradeteq (formerly Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley): “We started Tradeteq with the vision to make trade finance investable and to establish trade finance as an alternative asset class. This funding is a significant milestone for Tradeteq as it will allow us to aggressively expand our sales and marketing efforts as well as broaden and expedite product development.”

Nils Behling, co-founder and CFO (formerly Weil Gotshal, Merrill Lynch, Trafigura), added: “This successful funding round allows us to significantly accelerate Tradeteq’s development and to secure our position as innovation leader in the digital transformation of trade finance.”

Previous investors include GTR Ventures (trade industry experts), which in invested in the company in March 2018 and since then Tradeteq has opened an office in Singapore to lead its expansion into Asia Pacific.

This article first appeared at Accelerated.Ventures