This back-to-back win is a significant achievement in a competitive market, recognising the consistency of the team's expertise and its ability to help businesses navigate trade complexity, manage risk, and connect commercial ambition with opportunity across markets.

Trade is one of the ways businesses grow beyond their immediate markets. It connects producers with suppliers, links companies to customers, and helps essential goods move through domestic, regional, and global supply chains. But turning a trade opportunity into a completed transaction can involve complex payment obligations, working-capital pressures, multiple counterparties, and risks that cross borders and currencies.

Winning Best Trade Finance Bank at the 2026 Euromoney Transaction Banking Awards again is more than a 1-year milestone – it points to sustained capability in a competitive field, where clients need a banking partner that can combine specialist trade expertise, considered risk management, and solutions shaped around the realities of their businesses. For Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB), the back-to-back recognition celebrates the team's consistency and reinforces its commitment to helping clients move transactions forward with confidence.

Back-to-back recognition in a competitive market

The Euromoney Transaction Banking Awards recognises excellence across areas including cash management, payments, and trade finance. Their research-led assessment and market benchmarking make the awards an important industry reference point for institutions seeking to demonstrate the strength of their capabilities and the value they deliver to clients.

For Nedbank CIB, the recognition is more than an endorsement of a product offering. It reflects the importance of the people behind the service: a trade finance team that works to understand client requirements, assesses the risks around a transaction, and brings the right expertise together to help a business move forward. It also provides a platform to recognise the team's contribution to the bank's broader transactional banking capability and reinforce trust among clients and partners.

Expertise that connects finance with trade

Trade finance is rarely just about issuing a financial instrument. A client may need to coordinate payment with the shipment of goods, provide an overseas supplier with assurance, preserve working capital, or manage foreign-exchange exposure over a contract’s lifespan. The solution needs to reflect how the transaction will work in practice, not only how it appears on paper.

Nedbank CIB's work involves understanding those interconnected requirements and structuring solutions to address them. That can mean aligning trade instruments with funding and risk-management capabilities, coordinating requirements across counterparties and timelines, and working closely with clients to support execution. The value lies in bringing these elements together so that financial arrangements support the commercial objective.

Putting expertise into practice

PPC Cement's R3 billion cement plant modernisation programme in the Western Cape offers 1 example of this integrated approach. The project involves replacing 2 ageing cement plants with a modern facility and requires both construction financing and the import of specialised equipment from international suppliers.

Nedbank supported the offshore trade component through a US$66 million Usance Payable at Sight (UPAS) Letter of Credit, providing international suppliers with bank-backed payment assurance. The bank also participated as a joint financier of a R1 billion term loan for construction and acted as lead hedge provider for all offshore foreign-exchange hedging requirements and 50% of the related onshore hedging.

The structure connected supplier payment requirements, construction financing, and currency risk management within the broader project. It illustrates the execution required when trade finance is part of a larger investment: understanding the moving parts, coordinating complementary capabilities, and designing a solution around the client's delivery needs. The PPC Cement example is an illustration of our approach, rather than the full measure of Nedbank CIB's trade finance business.

Supporting business and economic growth

When businesses can manage trade-related risks and payment requirements more effectively, they are better positioned to maintain supplier relationships, fulfil contracts, and explore new markets. Well-structured trade finance can support working-capital management and give counterparties confidence, which helps viable commercial activity move from agreement to execution.

The benefits can be extended through supply chains, where importers rely on access to equipment and input; exporters depend on the ability to fulfil orders and receive payment; and suppliers, manufacturers, and service providers are connected through the movement of goods and capital. More resilient trade relationships can support business continuity, investment, and opportunities for growth.

In South Africa and across the continent these links matter to economic development. Trade finance cannot remove every barrier to trade, but it can help businesses manage the financial risks and timing challenges that stand between an opportunity and delivery. By supporting clients as they navigate these complexities, Nedbank CIB contributes to the financial infrastructure that enables trade to take place.

A team commitment to delivering value

Winning South Africa's Best Trade Finance Bank at the Euromoney Transaction Banking Awards for the second consecutive year is a notable achievement for Nedbank CIB. In a competitive trade finance market, ongoing recognition matters: it highlights the team's ability to sustain its standards, bring together specialist expertise, and deliver solutions aligned with clients' real commercial requirements. This award celebrates the people, collaboration, and execution behind that work, while strengthening the bank's standing as a partner to businesses navigating complex trade needs.

As supply chains evolve and businesses pursue opportunities in an increasingly interconnected economy, Nedbank CIB will continue to help clients manage complexity, transact with confidence, and build the relationships and resilience needed for sustainable growth.