Trade Finance
Published  5 MIN READ
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Case study: Statoil seeks clear oversight of trade finance

by Annie Lamngoc Sebergsen, Head of Trade Finance Sales Norway, Nordea

If you received Letters of Credit worth hundreds of millions of dollars, you’d want a robust trade finance system. Facing a growing call from its smaller counterparties for trade finance arrangements, international energy company Statoil sought greater control over its transactions.

Statoil is an international energy company and the world’s third-largest net seller of crude oil, moving over 100 million tons each year. With a growing call for trade finance arrangements from its counterparties, the company wanted a clear oversight of all its transactions.

Statoil’s experience of trade finance is as a receiver of Standby Letters of Credit (LCs) from smaller counterparties. “We typically receive around 700 to 1,000 LCs each year,” says Gunnar Steinsson, Statoil’s Head of Credit, Marketing and Trading. “That might not sound like many but the values involved can run up to hundreds of millions of dollars. We need a robust trade finance system, which gives us all the information we require in one place – we can’t afford to lose money on any transaction.”