Banking

Background

By standardizing trade finance procedures and providing guidelines on best practices, business can ensure that parties to transactions are operating under the same assumptions and increase the likelihood of payment. Such guidelines should reflect evolving practices and technologies, so that business benefits from increased efficiency and accuracy.

Objective
Increase the efficiency and decrease the cost and risk of international trade transactions by promoting the standardization of international banking and commercial practices and procedures.

Current Priorities

· Promote the adoption and integration of the newly approved revision of the ICC’s Uniform Rules for Demand Guarantees (URDG), as well Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits (UCP 600), to ensure greater clarity and understanding of current practices.

· Develop global set of forfeiting rules for both the primary and secondary markets.

· Revise the ICC “International Standard Banking Practices,” which explains how the guidelines articulated in the UCP are applied in practice.

· Prepare to host the ICC Banking Commission meeting in Orlando, June 22-23, 2010.

Chair
Michael Quinn

Managing Director

JP Morgan Global Trade Services

Staff Contacts

Shaun Donnelly

Vice President, Investment and Financial Services

(202) 682-1221 or sdonnelly@uscib.org

Erin Breitenbucher

Program Coordinator and Office Manager, Washington

(202) 682-7465 or ebreitenbucher@uscib.org

· Pursue expanded active membership in USCIB/ICC banking work by non-bank members and related associations.

· Respond to member inquiries regarding suspected cases of attempted financial fraud using falsified or illegitimate financial instruments or banking practices.

Recent Accomplishments

· Provided US opinions to the ICC Banking Commission’s recent global survey, Rethinking Trade Finance 2010.

· Worked to ensure trade finance interested reflected in the Basel II Consultation on Strengthening the Resilience of the Banking System.

· Supported the ICC Trade Finance Register to collect performance data for trade finance facilities on a collaborative basis with Asia Development Bank, with a view to facilitating more realistic treatment of trade assets in the allocation of banks’ capital.

· Communicated US interests in the recently launched URDG and UCP600 guides.