Trade Finance in Singapore: Comparison with Geneva

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Geneva and Singapore are the two leading centres of commodity trade finance outside London, with overlapping banks, instruments and case law. Several banks that finance commodities in Asia from Singapore manage the same business for Europe, Africa and the Middle East from Geneva. The Geneva volume records that BNP Paribas moved the global management of its commodity finance business to Geneva and that the Banque Cantonale de Genève built a trade finance line from 2000 onwards.¹ Both centres suffered from the frauds of 2020 and from the withdrawal of European banks. Geneva also lost Credit Suisse in 2023, one of its principal commodity lenders.²

The differences are of three kinds. The first concerns the domestic banks. Singapore has three large local groups that treat regional trade finance as a core business and that stayed in the market after 2020. Geneva relies more on foreign banks, on UBS and on the cantonal bank, whose capacity is smaller. The second concerns the role of the state. Singapore amended its Electronic Transactions Act to adopt the Model Law in 2021, while Switzerland has not adopted it, as the UNCITRAL list of adopting jurisdictions shows.³ Singapore’s government agencies also built TradeTrust and SGTraDex, while MAS supported an industry code and a central registry within three years of the frauds. Geneva’s response has been mainly private, through the banks and platforms of the trading cluster.

The third difference lies in the geography of the flows. Geneva finances trade with Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Singapore finances the flows into China, India and Southeast Asia, which makes Chinese banks and the offshore renminbi far more important. The Geneva volume worries about a “haemorrhage” of trade finance towards more favourable centres.⁴ Singapore is one of the destinations it has in mind. Each centre nevertheless depends on the other. The large trading groups divide their functions between the two cities, so that a fraud detected or missed in one of them affects the banks in both.

Notes

1. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie H, chapitre I, section « Les banques du financement du négoce à Genève », citing Le Temps, 16 February 2023 (BNP Paribas relocating the management of the activity to Geneva) and Credendo, Annual Report 2020 (BCGE trade finance line created in 2000). ↩
2. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie H, chapitre I, section « Les banques du financement du négoce à Genève »: disappearance of Credit Suisse in 2023, citing Le Temps, 16 February 2023, on its place among the leading trade finance banks. ↩
3. UNCITRAL, “Status: UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (2017)” (accessed November 2026): list of thirteen jurisdictions, which does not include Switzerland. ↩
4. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie H, chapitre I, citing « Trade finance : négoce à Genève, gare à l’hémorragie », Bilan, 3 March 2025. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.