Citi has announced that it has started working with Stenn, a global platform providing SME funding, as part of the expansion of its global trade payables finance product suite to include deep-tier supplier financing; helping to provide access to funding across global supply chains.
Stenn’s online platform provides SMEs with financing opportunities to help support their international trade. The offering will cover onboarding, compliance, risk management, and potential financing for a large universe of deep-tier suppliers.
Historically, deep-tier suppliers have had less access to credit as they are typically SMEs. Financing options available in the market have been limited or may come at a high cost.
The offering extends the benefits of Citi’s Supply Chain Finance programs by providing financing to the suppliers of the supplier, which has previously been an underfinanced area; ultimately completing the client value chain. Deep-Tier Supplier Financing will also help deliver growth to the economies whereby financing is made available directly to the manufacturer of goods, as well as to the deep tier suppliers.
Chris Cox Head of Trade and Working Capital, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi, commented: “Deep Tier Supplier Financing provides our clients with solutions that can further strengthen relationships with suppliers and help to improve the resilience of supply chains, by working to providing access to attractive financing. With Stenn, we believe we can provide further sustainability and visibility to our clients’ supply chains, by bringing financing to the last mile supplier. Citi remains committed to servicing the end-to-end needs of our clients as frictionlessly as possible as the global trade landscape evolves. Developing these offerings with fintechs like Stenn helps deliver that capability.”
Greg Karpovsky, CEO, Stenn commented: “The pairing of Stenn’s scalable & digital platform with a financial giant like Citi is a major step forward, in helping to provide more SMEs with virtually seamless access to affordable finance to support their international trade. SMEs reportedly face a financing gap of $3.7 trillion. To date, Stenn has issued over $5 billion of finance to SMEs in over 70 countries. Working with Citi is a significant milestone in helping struggling SMEs in a global post-pandemic trade environment.”
