Steven Beck

Steven Beck is Director of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Trade and Supply Chain Division. Steven built ADB’s trade and supply chains finance businesses as ‘start-ups’ that now deliver guarantees and loans in support of about 20,000 transactions a year worth over US $5 billion annually. Steven has 25 years’ experience in international trade and, in addition to leading ADB’s trade and supply chain finance businesses, launched initiatives to maximize the ‘development impact’ from trade by addressing some of its shortcomings.

Steven established the first global default and loss data in trade financing, originally called the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)—ADB Trade Finance Register. This has influenced the regulatory treatment of trade finance, freeing billions of dollars in financing capacity, helping close financing market gaps.

Steven launched ADB’s Trade Finance Gaps, Growth and Jobs study: the first and only study to estimate market gaps and unmet demand for trade finance. It is the world’s barometer on global trade finance gaps and highlights the imperative of addressing this market failure. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Steven led the ADB’s Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program as an effective crisis response vehicle, facilitating over 1,400 transactions worth US $1 billion in the food and agriculture sector and supporting the distribution of vital medicines and vaccines across Asia.

Steven has been driving digitalization of global trade, creating the Digital Standards Initiative (DSI) in partnership with the Government of Singapore and the International Chamber of Commerce, as well as driving consensus on international harmonized standards for electronic trade documents—required to get digitalization of trade done by 2030. In addition to trade digitalization, Steven is driving initiatives seeking to track and report carbon and labour standards in supply chains; address trade-based money laundering; narrow financing gaps for smaller companies; and enhance greater participation of women in trade.

He serves on the Governing Board of the DSI, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) Working Group for Trade Finance. Steven is a member of the Advisory Council of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and its International Sustainable Standards Board (ISSB) Foundation.

He holds an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, USA and a B.A. from Queen’s University, Canada.