For more than 15 years, the ICC Trade Register has provided the trade finance industry with something particularly valuable: credible data. Since its establishment in 2008, it has developed into an important industry benchmark for banks, regulators and other market participants seeking to understand the risk and performance characteristics of trade finance products.

Now it is changing. From September 2026, the Trade Register becomes the ICC Global Trade Intelligence Report, a new name that reflects a significantly broader ambition.

The change goes well beyond rebranding.

Trade finance has always been shaped by the environment in which trade takes place, but that environment is becoming more complex. Geopolitical tensions and economic disruption are influencing established trade flows, while policy changes are helping to create new ones.

Historical default and recovery statistics therefore remain essential, but they are more useful when viewed against the developments that may be driving them.

The new report seeks to provide that broader perspective. It will retain the established trade finance risk benchmarks, with updated default and recovery rates drawn from more than 15 years of industry data, while extending the analysis to the changing patterns of global trade. This should provide greater insight into developments across regions and trade corridors and, importantly, help explain what may lie behind movements in the underlying risk data.

That is potentially a significant step forward.

A change in a default rate has value as a benchmark, but its usefulness increases when it can be understood in the context of the market in which it occurred. A movement concentrated in a particular geography may tell a very different story from one evident across several markets. The same applies when looking at individual trade finance products or considering whether changes reflect temporary disruption or a broader shift in trading patterns.

The underlying dataset is also continuing to expand. BBVA and Intesa Sanpaolo have joined the contributor network, taking the number of participating global banks to 22 and extending the information available across different markets and products.

The 2026 edition will complement its Global Overview Report with regional and product-specific reports, allowing users to move from the wider picture into the areas most relevant to their own business.

This development also comes at an interesting point for trade finance.

Much is being said about the increasing value of data as digitalisation advances and AI becomes more involved in the processing and analysis of transactions. Yet the value does not come simply from accumulating more data. It comes from being able to interpret it and understand what it reveals about the trade activity from which it originates.

The evolution from the Trade Register to the Global Trade Intelligence Report reflects that shift. The industry will continue to need reliable benchmarks, but combining them with a better understanding of the changing patterns of global trade should make those benchmarks considerably more useful.

The first ICC Global Trade Intelligence Report will be published in September 2026.

Source:https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/news/icc-trade-register-becomes-icc-global-trade-intelligence-report-to-reflect-expanded-scope/#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=c28f47fa-600d-4252-a0fc-e8f21e680300

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of ICC.