Trade finance marketplace Mitigram has hired an executive director for financial institutions as it seeks to consolidate and grow its relationships with banks.

Simon de Monte has taken up the newly created role, based in London, after 16 years of various trade and wholesale banking roles at Bank ABC.

The company says it has some 75 financial institution groups registered on the platform and de Monte will be charged with increasing that number, helping oversee existing relationships, and co-ordinating the activities of local sales directors.

He will jointly report to chief executive Milena Torciano and to Joshua Cohen, the company’s managing director for financial institutions.

De Monte began his career at the London Forfaiting Company and had a short stint at ABN Amro, before joining Bank ABC’s parent company, the Arab Banking Corporation.

“We are delighted to have Simon joining the Mitigram team,” Torciano tells GTR.

“His customer-centric focus, keen interest in trade digitisation and depth of experience in trade and commodities finance make him an invaluable asset to our future growth.”

De Monte says he is “extremely excited to be joining the team at Mitigram to help maintain and grow its FI client member banks”.

“Digitalisation is key to the development of many aspects of trade and commodity finance in the future, and by joining Mitigram I look forward to playing a role in accelerating the pace of change, providing a much more seamless experience for all of the parties involved in international trade.”

Mitigram bills itself as the world’s largest trade finance marketplace and says it facilitates more than US$2.5bn-worth of transactions monthly.