Lewis Hart

If you think about tracking all this collateral as it's moving around the world, you need people.

Now, over time, digitization is going to take hold here.

You still need know-how.

You need people.

And it's not easy to kind of run this business every day if you don't have the right people.

We're fortunate to have a very experienced team that knows how to do this.

We started 206 years ago in this business.

So we've literally been doing it for over two centuries.

And

That's a big part, I think, of why we've stayed committed.

It's kind of the DNA of our of our firm.

I think, you know, over time, you're seeing some banks coming back into it.

But you also saw in the energy space in particular,

First of all, big problems in 2015 during the correction.

Banks lost some money.

And then you had ESG pressures, particularly around European banks, that caused some to say, you know, I don't really want to be in the business of financing this commodity or that commodity.

I'm going to shift my resources more to the renewable sector, for example.

So those are all the factors that I think have contributed to it.

But there is a group of banks globally that has stayed committed to this business through kind of thick and thin and knows how to do it, has produced good returns, very low losses over time.

So, you know, the bill of lading is like, I call it the talisman of trade finance.