The case for financing trade through DP World — a company that actually moves the cargo.
Since joining DP World in 2021, Sinan Ozcan has built a trade finance business from the ground up within one of the world’s largest end-to-end logistics providers — a company that has grown to more than 120,000 employees from 56,000 in that time.
By embedding finance directly into the flow of goods, DP World can verify cargo in real time, detect fraud, and extend capital to clients that conventional banks routinely overlook.
In this interview, Ozcan, senior executive officer and board director at DP World Trade Finance, explains how that model works — and where it is headed next.
Global Finance: How have the recent events in the MENA region affected your operations?
Sinan Ozcan: Our global network and integrated end-to-end logistics model continue to provide resilience and flexibility across the region. Ports remain operational, and we have significantly scaled our inland logistics capabilities. We provide bonded corridors from port to inland locations, 24/7 tracking, and we prioritize essential cargo. Trade finance is an integral part of our global strategy to provide our clients with a one-stop solution to handle trade. DP World trade finance continues to support existing and new clients. We are fully operational in our lending business.
GF: What are some of the lessons learned from this crisis in the Gulf?
Ozcan: It actually confirmed the validity of our strategy. Several years ago, our clients were mainly shipping lines, and our revenue came almost exclusively from the port business. We realized that embedding trade finance into cargo movement was something difficult for traditional banks to understand, but a massive opportunity for us. Today, we go way beyond shipping lines, meaning we deal with warehousing, forwarding, and shipping from factory floor to customer’s door. DP World basically handles trade end-to-end and finds the route that makes sense for the client. We are fast, quick, and agile.
GF: What was the original idea behind DP World Trade Finance, and how has it evolved?
Ozcan: Almost 10 years ago, when DP World started its transformation journey, it was obvious to us that global supply chains were quite fragile and that this was impacting overall trade. When I joined in 2021 to set up the trade finance business, DP World had 56,000 employees; today, we have more than 120,000.
It’s a massive transformation that is happening all around the world. In the last two and a half years, we have also acquired several companies and opened over 200 logistics and forwarding offices, all across the globe.
That transformation required understanding the ultimate clients: the companies that actually manufacture, trade, retail, and wholesale the cargo, what we call cargo owners. So first, when your client base changes from shipping lines to cargo owners, it requires a lot of agility from factory floor to customer door.
But even that was not enough, because when we asked our clients, How can we help you more? They mentioned infrastructure and access to finance as their main challenges. That’s how we decided to start our trade finance business. We wanted to do it differently: by understanding where the gaps lie, creating solutions and making trade finance more inclusive and transparent.
GF: What is an underestimated risk, and how do you detect it?
Ozcan: The traditional banking method is to look at balance sheets, but we think that a very big risk in trade is fraud and collusion. It’s not entirely visible to banks what’s going on in a trade route. For example, you have a buyer and a seller, but do they really exchange the goods? Do they actually trade or collude? That’s a major risk. To de-risk that, we embed trade finance into logistics and the supply chain. We link the money flow as much as possible to the flow of goods.
If you’re a bank today, you would receive a bill of lading—a transport document—which should serve as evidence of the trade you financed. But it can be fake, forged, lost, you name it. That creates a lot of uncertainty.
As a global logistics provider, we have visibility into more than 90% of global container movements in real time. When we receive a bill of lading, whether or not we are handling the cargo, we can verify that the cargo is present and track it. That gives us a massive view and transparency to minimize the risk of fraud and collusion.
GF: How do you then de-risk trade finance?
Ozcan: There is also a misperception of trade finance as a rather riskier asset class. That is because traditional banking methods are not able to distinguish good apples from the bad ones, and they apply heavy collateral across the board. But a company cannot have unlimited collateral if it wants to keep growing. For that, we’ve created a bundled trade finance solution that lets us control the cargo, collateralize it, and, instead of asking for mortgages on fixed assets, collateralize the trade itself.
Another way of de-risking is to look not just at that balance sheet or profit-and-loss statement — which is a piece of paper that might, again, be fake, forged, or lost — but at trade data. We can verify whatever we see on a prospective borrower’s balance sheet. We can also establish patterns in that trade, which significantly helps us underwrite the risks.
GF: How do you see global trade changing?
Ozcan: I believe trade is like a living creature that wants to be set free, so it will find a way no matter what happens, because people will always need goods. But in recent years, there has certainly been more protectionism, more regionalization, and a shift in supply chains. We also see that offshoring is gradually being replaced with nearshoring or friendshoring. There is an overall shift toward diversifying procurement and manufacturing sources.
GF: Which trade finance products have the best growth opportunities?
Ozcan: There are a lot of trade finance products, but if you speak with the CFO of a client, it only helps them if you actually solve their problems. At DP World, we try to provide bespoke solutions: it could be a variation of an existing product, such as invoice discounting; a combination of pre-shipment inventory finance and post-shipment receivables finance; or a permutation or combination of those.
For example, you can have a client in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who is very well banked, and you might think they wouldn’t need finance, but actually everyone does. Businesses want to grow.
Maybe that client wants to set up overseas offices. If it chooses to set up in the U.S., local banks in North America won’t necessarily recognize the strength of the company in the UAE and treat it like any other North American startup. Banks in the UAE would not have visibility into the operations and supply chain of the client’s North American subsidiary and would shy away from financing it.
In this model, our ability to view their cargo movements globally allows financing for the parent company in the UAE as well as their North American subsidiary. What we are doing looks very different from a traditional bank. We do offer standard products, but ultimately, we try to find solutions to bigger problems, instead of being just another bank on the block.
GF: How do you see DP World Trade Finance evolving?
Ozcan: I find what we have done so far remarkable, but I foresee that what we will do in the next five years will be transformational. A geographical expansion is in the pipeline. We are setting up in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Latin America, and, hopefully, North America.
We also plan to create more embedded trade finance solutions with various trade and transport scenarios. It will be a simple yet very structured tool to help our clients get their cargo to their destination faster and more cost-effectively. And last but not least, we will continue increasing our collaboration with other financial institutions.
We don’t plan to become another major bank; it’s never been about just lending money. Rather, it’s about supporting global trade and providing the lifeblood of trade: access to capital. And for that, we will continue collaborating with other banks, financial institutions, trade finance funds, and non-bank finance companies. We will be doing more risk participation agreements on a funded and unfunded basis, and we will be adding more origination to distribution.
