A new blueprint for resilient supply chain finance

Explore the reorientation of supply chain finance as a strategic instrument to safeguard trade flows and support working-capital planning.

10 June 2026

8 mins

Corporate & investment bankingTrade & working capitalTransaction banking

In the new normal of continuous geopolitical disruption and economic uncertainty, supply chain finance (SCF) is moving beyond its traditional remit.

SCF encompasses a set of financing solutions designed to optimise working capital and improve cash flow for both buyers and suppliers. These solutions range from buyer-led programmes such as approved payables finance (allowing buyers to pay later) to seller-led instruments such as receivables discounting, inventory finance, or distributor finance (which let sellers be paid on time). In essence, these solutions are designed to unlock liquidity across a trade cycle.

But what began as a tool with liquidity in mind has evolved into a buffer for resilience: SCF is now entering a more strategic phase, a means of safeguarding trade flows and better integrating into broader working-capital planning. Especially for companies with multi-tiered supply chains, spanning regions and jurisdictions, all scrambling to adapt to an increasingly volatile trade ecosystem.

In this latest episode of Trade Finance Global’s (TFG) podcast series with Standard Chartered, Future of Trade, Mark Abrams, Managing Director at TFG discussed the reorientation of SCF as a strategic instrument with Riccardo Scapinello, Global Head of Supply Chain Finance at Standard Chartered.

Restructure and repurpose

SCF has increasingly developed into a balancing act of price, payment terms, and financing. In the pursuit of working capital optimisation, tailor-made financing solutions are increasingly crucial, and “corporates are deploying SCF much more purposefully, much more selectively,” explained Scapinello. “They’re targeting critical suppliers and critical geographies.”

Supply chain flexibility is critical to this, both the physical network and the opportunities it can lend to working capital.

“Clients are reshoring, nearshoring, or moving their invoices domestically into some markets where they previously did not have a presence,” said Scapinello.

Disruption caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic, which elucidated the vulnerability of complex supply chains, prompted many businesses to turn to diversifying and nearshoring their supply chains. However, in recent years, mounting tariffs and increased exposure to economic and geopolitical shocks have meant that the supply chain chaos of 2020 doesn’t exist in memory as an isolated incident, but rather as the start of a new way of being.

Standard Chartered’s 2025 Future of Trade survey revealed that 56 per cent of the 1,200 surveyed corporates ranked the geographic realignment of supply chains as a top strategy for building supply chain resilience.

COVID, many thought, brought an unprecedented degree of volatility. In that case, the volatility brought about by the series of tariffs unveiled by the US on many of its major trading partners must have been, to an extent, precedented. Now, “the conflict in the Middle East is the litmus test for the survival of supply chains amidst longer transit times and delayed payments,” said Scapinello.

With every period of volatility in modern times, supply chains and the tools that finance them, including SCF, ebb and flow, grow from each preceding crisis.

But global fragmentation isn’t just geopolitical; it’s also regulatory. When a multinational’s manufacturing repositions itself in a new jurisdiction, suppliers have to take on the challenge of complying with local regulations.

When supply chains relocate, they must also adapt to the norms and standards of their new location. Geographic realignment isn’t free of charge: corporates turning to supply chain realignment as a resilience tactic also cite the subsequent costs as a top concern.

What's becoming even more critical is flexibility. As trade routes diversify and supply chains continuously get re-engineered, clients have to build programmes that are far more resilient than they were in the past.

Riccardo Scapinello

Global Head, Supply Chain Finance, Standard Chartered

Businesses nearshoring or reshoring “drives the need to offer extended terms to those clients and buyers, and change the way that they invoice,” he added. This allows for adjustments within new jurisdictions, with the protection of a business’s buyers, distributors, and suppliers being tantamount.

Recently, business models that require longer-term financing – such as software as a service (SaaS) and other recurring-revenue contracts – are emerging; ones where payment terms extend beyond a single trade cycle and need structures that can support multi-month or multi-year terms.

Innovating: Interwoven funding, inventory, and increasing dynamism

Central to this evolution is the transformation of the receivables industry, The receivables industry is moving away from legacy systems that previously hindered the flexibility demanded from large corporations, and financing solutions are being approached with increased malleability. Scapinello discussed various innovations within the SCF and receivables space, all built to enforce that fluidity that is essential for navigating uncertain environments.

The first, multi-funder rails. “Financing solutions are now evolving into combined structures with multiple, interwoven funding sources, being expressed through digital platforms and fintechs,” said Scapinello, all built to scale capacity.  

The second, inventory-based solutions. Inventory days – the number of days a company holds inventory before selling it – has increased since the beginning of the decade, largely because “companies need to secure their supply chain and therefore, carry more raw materials or ready products,” said Scapinello.

Inventory finance is a working capital solution that allows inventory itself to operate as collateral, enabling companies to obtain loans and improve cash flow. Increasing inventory days increases the amount of collateral, easing time and supply constraints for businesses trying to tackle the uncertainty surrounding supply chains.

The third, specified solutions tailored to their particular geographies. Scapinello has observed these “local-ready structures” cropping up more and more. New corridors bring new currencies, foreign exchange (FX) risks, and debt pressures – making stronger the case for local currency financing rather than defaulting to the US dollar.

From Standard Chartered’s vantage point, regions like the US and Asia-Pacific (APAC) saw significant growth, and keeping a global vantage point allows for the development of tailored facilities.

In Muslim-majority markets, for instance, Islamic finance solutions demonstrate this adaptability within SCF (consider the concept of murabaha, the cost-plus sale structure that replaces interest-bearing instruments with asset-backed transactions). Structural versatility provides treasurers and deal arrangers with price predictability while limiting risk.

Scapinello considers this to play into Standard Chartered’s ability to support multi‑currency trade across key emerging and developed market corridors, combining local‑market liquidity with global structuring. As payments infrastructure and digital settlement rails evolve – including tokenisation and digital assets – firms are starting to prepare future-proof policies, and ones which are not USD‑dependent.

The fourth, dynamic SCF. Dynamic SCF can align funding with where cash is generated and where it’s needed, support multi-currency settlement, and reduce reliance on any single funding market during periods of stress. For treasury teams, the impact is more than speed, cutting days down – the impact is on predictability.

Certainly, as models grow increasingly dynamic, governance becomes non-negotiable: clear eligibility criteria, independent controls, strong documentation, and performance indicators that measure resilience outcomes (continuity of supply, on-time delivery, supplier health) alongside the traditional working capital metrics.

These are all approaches which improve supply chain resilience by enabling companies to work more effectively with suppliers and buyers across different regions, currencies, and regulatory environments: all while improving the predictability of cash flows. Ultimately, a modern and evolving receivables and payables policy is about ensuring liquidity moves with trade, not with a single reference currency.

A client-centric point of view

SCF, at its core, is designed to redistribute liquidity across a client’s ecosystem. But a one-size-fits-all structure is not suitable for an economic landscape where the ‘size’ changes so drastically and frequently.

Clients are increasingly deploying SCF across the broad spectrum of these solutions – so payables, receivables, inventory, distributor finance – and they're really trying to tailor that to the geography and the currency of the key suppliers and buyers.

Riccardo Scapinello

Global Head, Supply Chain Finance, Standard Chartered

For a corporate to leverage SCF solutions, it must first be clear about its desired outcome, be it supporting certain buyers or improving certain terms like stock or production. The strategy should then be built around this particular purpose, being treated as an ecosystem where all pieces and processes interact with one another.

This means “aligning procurement, treasury, finance, sales, and business early on, and making sure that the program is designed in a way that meets the why you’re doing it,” Scapinello said. It is only then that execution can happen.

Necessity is the mother of invention: the transformation of SCF really took off when the end goal became resilience, not just a stronger balance sheet.

The end goal is still in sight. For one thing, methods to best aggregate extensive data are key for dynamic SCF models to become more mainstream, and “interoperability and the quality of information” remain barriers to this end, as Scapinello highlighted.

Nonetheless, ground has been covered, thanks to a growing recognition in the industry that to best kindle innovation in SCF, trade flows need to be “treated as an ecosystem program,” he stressed. “Aligning procurement, treasury, finance, sales, and business early on” is the key to leveraging a resilient supply chain.