Joshua W J Brown

Before financing electronic trade documents: five questions lenders should ask

Electronic trade documents can remove paper from trade finance without removing the legal work that paper possession used to perform. For a lender, the practical question is not whether a platform calls a record “controlled”, but whether the transaction can prove a legally operative record, exclusive and divestible control, the relevant perfection or priority route, alignment with the goods and bailee, and durable evidence after failure or change of medium. This article uses the UK Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023, Ontario’s electronic-chattel-paper rules and Canadian federal trade-document statutes to frame five closing questions for financing counsel.