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On July 15, Sullivan hosted, together with Trade Treasury Payments (TTP), the inaugural Breakfast Club seminar at The Lansdowne Club in London to discuss: Who can really grow supply chain finance, and how?

Moderated by Geoffrey Wynne, Head of Trade and Export Finance at Sullivan, the panel included Parvaiz Dalal from Citi, Marco Nindl from the EBRD, Anthony Wadsworth-Hill from Mercore and Daniela Barrdear, partner at Sullivan.

The discussion was introduced by Eleanor Hill, Treasury Editor at TTP, and centred around one of the sector’s most persistent dilemmas: despite decades of innovation, why has supply chain finance (SCF) failed to meaningfully close the SME trade finance gap?

With SCF being a well established tool Geoffrey Wynne indicated that is the case – but only for some. He said, “The reality is you can only grow it so far if you only have a limited number of buyers.”

The discussion explored how to scale SCF beyond large buyers into SME networks, with barriers ranging from digital readiness to legal complexity. While digitalisation promises faster onboarding, panellists noted that outdated compliance processes and misaligned mindsets still slow progress. Daniela Barrdear highlighted a less visible challenge: “It’s often not the lawyers who are the bottleneck. It’s the documents themselves,” with many SCF agreements remain a confusing mixture of different banks’ requirements and jurisdictions, creating delays and higher costs.

Barrdear stressed that the solution is modernisation, not reinvention. She added: “There are industry templates already that can be updated. We don’t have to start from scratch. But we do need to have a conversation about what actually works operationally, not just legally,” she said.

The full discussion – covering digitalisation, supplier onboarding and collaborative models – is available in TTP’s latest article and podcast which are accessible here.