Lewis Hart

Thanks, Tracy.

Thanks, Joe.

It's great to be here.

Oh, that's a tough one.

It's a good question.

And the way I think of it, it's like the biggest $20 trillion market that no one talks about.

So you think about global trade, about $20 trillion of global trade in goods goes through trade finance programs.

Commodity finance is a specialized subset of trade finance, and it's about $4 or $5 trillion.

So as a huge market, it sort of surprises me sometimes that it doesn't get more headlines.

But it's not that glamorous.

It's kind of boring.

And so when things go well, it doesn't really create the drama that headlines are seeking.

Sure.

Sure.

Well, it's really the business of financing motion.

And so the classic example would be a commodity merchant.

Okay.

Commodity merchant kind of evokes a lot of history, right?

You think back to Renaissance Italy and the Medicis and all the merchants that kind of pioneered global trade in those days and actually goes back even farther.

You can go back to even the BCs and see trade finance happening.