Finance for importers and exporterssupplier terms covered

The situation

Wholesalers and trading businesses moving goods across borders face a specific kind of cash-flow gap: a supplier overseas wants a deposit or full payment before goods are shipped, while a customer at home may not pay for 30, 60 or 90 days after delivery. The business's own cash flow sits in the middle of that gap, and the bigger the order, the wider the gap gets — meaning growth itself can become the thing that strains cash flow rather than relieving it.

This shows up most sharply around a seasonal buying cycle or a single large order that would otherwise be well within the business's capability, but which lands well ahead of the customer payments that would ordinarily fund it, leaving a genuinely profitable transaction stuck for want of short-term cash.

Why the first answer is often no

Trade finance is a genuinely specialised category that many mainstream lenders don't offer at all, or offer only to businesses with a long, well-established trading history and full financial disclosure. A growing importer or exporter — taking on a larger order than its current cash flow comfortably supports, or working with a new supplier or customer — can find that a bank's standard working-capital facility wasn't built for the specific mechanics of a letter of credit or a documented purchase order, and doesn't flex to match the transaction it's meant to support.

Currency exposure adds a further layer of complexity that a generalist lender may not be set up to look past, even where the underlying trade itself is entirely sound and the business has managed similar transactions successfully before.

How it gets funded

Trade finance funds the gap between paying an overseas supplier and being paid by the local customer, often structured around a letter of credit or a documented purchase order, and sized to the specific transaction rather than the business as a whole. Invoice and debtor finance advances against invoices raised on long payment terms, freeing up cash before the customer actually settles. A business line of credit covers general working capital between shipments, while short-term business loans can fund a one-off requirement such as a larger-than-usual order or an unexpected cost.

Lenders in this category look closely at the purchase order, the supplier relationship and the confirmed buyer, alongside the business's own trading history — a strong transaction can support an application even where the business itself has a relatively short track record. Trade finance and invoice finance are commonly held together rather than as alternatives, with trade finance drawn transaction by transaction and a line of credit covering the gaps in between.

What to have ready

The purchase order or sales contract for the specific transaction, supplier and customer details, evidence of past completed trade cycles if available, entity documents, and recent bank statements showing the business's broader trading activity. Where a letter of credit is involved, having the draft terms from your bank or supplier ready speeds up how quickly a facility can be structured around it, as does a clear note of the currency and Incoterms the transaction is being conducted under.

Working with us

We start with the specific transaction — what's being bought, from whom, on what terms, and who the confirmed buyer is — since a strong transaction can carry an application further than a business's general financial history alone. From there we place the file with lenders who understand letters of credit and trade-cycle funding specifically, rather than a generalist working-capital lender unfamiliar with the mechanics.

Currency risk sits alongside the finance itself rather than inside it — trade finance funds the timing gap in a transaction, and where currency exposure is a real concern, we can point you toward a foreign exchange conversation to run alongside the facility. As trading relationships and order sizes grow, we revisit the facility structure so it keeps pace with the business rather than constraining it, and we're glad to work with the same lender across repeat transactions once a track record is established, which tends to improve both pricing and turnaround over time.