In a ringing endorsement for any employer, Cynthia Tchikoltsoff has been at BNP Paribas her whole career, steadily climbing the ladder since joining as an intern in the Paris office in 2007 to make Head, Global Trade Solutions, APAC, a year ago. In conversation with Treasury Today from her office in Singapore, she explains how working in Asia has always defined in her career. Shortly after joining the bank as a new graduate, she travelled to Australia to fill a short-term post to support a trade finance deal in what turned out to be the start of a new and enduring career in the region.
“I never went back,” she laughs.
Tchikoltsoff has spent the last 16 years in Hong Kong, interspersed with shorter postings in Singapore, working across BNP Paribas’ supply chain offering, supporting clients in 12 Asia markets manage receivables, payables, inventories, and raise finance. Whether customising structured solutions or rolling out the bank’s off-the-shelf trade products, she regards this unique relationship as both fascinating and a privilege, offering a window into corporates’ key concerns and priorities and the trends and factors shaping business. Of which, she says, ESG and digitisation are now key themes.
Tchikoltsoff believes trade finance and sustainability are already comfortable bedfellows given trade finance is one of the most inclusive forms of financing. “When it comes to trade finance, banks deal with multiple counterparties.” She notes how supply chain finance involves bringing capital to parts of the value chain that may struggle to access finance, but that these smaller companies are able to tap capital with the support of a strong corporate client.
She adds that this has even more resonance given today’s higher borrowing costs, noting how clients are increasingly feeling the cost of high interest rates. “In the last few years, financing cost were around 1- 2% but now that is around 5-6% depending on the currency or credit profile.”
When financing includes ESG objectives and KPIs embedded into the lending, the offering becomes even more sustainable, she continues. “This way you can have a much bigger impact because you’re able to go beyond your clients own ESG aspirations, and tackle issues in the value chain, and a lot of the ESG issues are in the value chain.”
Elsewhere BNP Paribas is involved in pushing market standardisation with other industry groups around what constitutes sustainable trade. “We play a core role in advocating here,” she says. She adds that the bank’s own progress and commitments to reduce fossil fuel financing (it has pledged to reduce its exposure to oil production by 25% compared to 2020 by 2025) having been “one of the largest banks in energy financing” increasingly shape and inform client relationships. The bank has also accelerated the timeframe of its complete coal exit by 2030 in OECD and EU countries and by 2040 in the rest of the world and committed to invest €40bn in renewable energy by 2030.
The bank’s ESG commitments go beyond energy transition and climate action. BNP Paribas committed to have 40% of women on the Executive Committee by 2025 and is driving DEI in specific areas that have traditionally been male dominated like IT. She says the debate around gender diversity is now most focused on inclusion and encouraging talented individuals to come forward. “It’s not really just a focus on gender but more about being able to embrace diversity as a whole and being able to nurture talent regardless of where people come from; regardless of their ethnicity, social background, or gender.”
The diversity encapsulated in her role is one of the aspects of the job she enjoys most. It manifests particularly in her team, spread across different countries throughout APAC. “Doing a deal in India is not the same as in China nor in Japan. The multicultural aspect and working across different cultures to create solutions is truly enriching.”
