Markus Wohlgeschaffen

Markus Wohlgeschaffen is Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Solutions at TrustBills GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. He is responsible for the rollout of TrustBills at all partner banks and advises corporate customers on the professional use of the TrustBills platform. Markus is a Senior Trade Finance & Service Expert who has previously worked for more than 30 years for UniCredit Group and its predecessor banks. He has gained an in-depth 360° know-how in all areas of Trade Finance as well as Financial Risk Management. He started his international career in Japan, where he covered all sales activities of Trade Finance & Service Products (LCs, Documentary Collections, Guarantees, short-, mid- and long-term Trade Finance) to multinational corporates and to correspondent banks with trade links to Japan. As a next step he has set up a nation-wide sales network for Trade Finance & Service Products in Italy. He successfully acted as an external consultant for the Italian Export Credit Agency (SACE) in order to facilitate the without-recourse purchase of SACE-insured Supplier Credits. After more than 11 years of managerial sales responsibility, he assumed the role as Global Product Head in charge of all traditional and innovative Trade & Supply Chain Finance Products of UniCredit Group. His responsibility comprised the development and management of all Trade Products, the Portfolio Management of all Trade Assets and the optimization of complex, large-scale business processes to improve productivity through centralized IT-platforms and processing centers as well as the outsourcing of non-core activities. He positioned UniCredit Group as an Application Service Provider for new client-centric IT-solutions for the administration of Trade Processes. In addition to that, he developed a new Target Operating Model for the Trade Finance Business. Fully convinced about the benefits of new technology, he created new products based on the new message format MT798 of SWIFT and the Bank Payment Obligation (BPO).

As a senior member of various industry shaping bodies, Markus has actively worked on many initiatives that gear the Trade Finance Industry. Amongst others, he was the Chairman of BAFT’s Global Trade Industry Council (GTIC) as well as member of the Advisory Board of the ICC Banking Commission, the Board of Trustees of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics in Dortmund, the SWIFT Corporate Advisory Group (CAG) and is still active in the World Trade Board. Moreover, he was a consultant for the Italian export credit agency (SACE) and the ICC Banking Commission. He regularly publishes articles and occurs as a speaker and panellist on national and international conferences.