UK Export Finance (UKEF) has backed British companies in Saudi Arabia with deals totalling £6.4 billion following the UK Finance Minister's visit to Riyadh in October 2025. The package includes £5 billion of export-finance support aimed at winning large-scale Saudi infrastructure and technology contracts.

At its core, this reflects the increasingly strategic role of export finance agencies (EFAs) in shaping global trade finance flows. In this case the UK government is using export finance as a lever of geopolitics, investment and trade transition. For British banks and trade finance teams, the deal underscores the premium given to governments aligning export finance, diplomatic objectives and commercial contracts.

Importantly, the deals cover not only traditional goods and infrastructure but also technology and AI-investment firms such as the UK's Quantexa. This signals a broadening of what export finance covers, and thus what trade finance banks must support: tech services, digital capital goods and software-enabled projects, not just physical plant and equipment.

For global trade finance practitioners, the key takeaways highlight that:

EFAs remain central to enabling high-risk, long-tenor trade flows;

That trade finance flows are increasingly anchored to investment finance in emerging markets:

and that documentation, risk mitigation and compliance standards must evolve to cover non-traditional exports. Banks financing such deals must incorporate ESG clauses, long-tenor risk-cover, and handle cross-border payment and guarantee mechanisms spanning several jurisdictions.

The UK-Saudi deal also illustrates how local currency risk, political risk and export credit insurability converge. For example, UKEF support will likely come with site-specific conditions: performance guarantees, cultural risk oversight, manpower training clauses, perhaps even green finance criteria.

Trade finance institutions participating will need the documentation agility, credit structuring expertise and cross-border legal infrastructure to capture their share of these flows.

The £6.4 billion UK-Saudi export-finance package is indicative of a deeper shift: export-finance is becoming global investment finance, trade finance networks are expanding into new geographies and sectors, and banks must adapt by offering broader services, smarter structuring and stronger partnerships with EFAs.

Further information: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uk-unlocks-86-bln-trade-investment-deals-with-saudi-arabia-2025-10-28/

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