MSE Tools · Trade & Structured Finance
A structuring pre-read of a self-liquidating commodity trade, built on the eligibility logic lenders actually apply: binary gates first, then control over the goods, then the six pillars a credit committee walks through. The output is not a score - it is a verdict, an indicative advance-rate zone, and the conditions precedent a term sheet will carry.
Six conditions lenders treat as binary. A weighted average has no authority here: one failed gate means the transaction is not financeable as structured, whatever the rest of the profile says. Each gate states what evidences it - and what reopens it.
Seven criteria decide whether the goods function as collateral, and how much of their value a lender will advance. Each answer level is defined; the resulting zone is an indicative market range for structures of this profile, with the binding constraint named - not an offer.
The walk a credit committee actually takes. Every criterion carries defined answer levels and states what a lender will ask for - answers below the top level generate the conditions-precedent list in the verdict panel.
Methodology
What it reflects. The framework encodes the standard eligibility logic of commodity trade finance: self-liquidation, control over goods and proceeds, documentary integrity, and legal enforceability. Its reference points are the instruments and practice a documentary trade actually runs on - UCP 600 and ISBP 821 for documentary credits, URC 522 for collections, URDG 758 and ISP98 for demand guarantees and standbys, Incoterms 2020 for risk and insurance allocation, and the New York Convention 1958 for the enforceability of the arbitration clause that sits behind every contract in the file.
Why gates are binary. Basel III recognises collateral and guarantees as credit-risk mitigation only where legal certainty exists; a sanctions nexus, an unenforceable contract or an unassignable insurance policy is not a weak point in an average - it removes the mitigation entirely. The framework therefore refuses to let a strong pillar profile buy back a failed gate, because no credit committee will.
Why structure carries the weight. The ICC Trade Register documents, year after year, that documentary trade finance runs at default and loss rates far below comparable corporate lending - not because traders are better credits, but because the structure is: short tenor, self-liquidation, control of goods and documents. This framework tests for exactly those properties, which is why custody and title questions outrank almost everything else.
Why the compliance pillar is load-bearing. The screening, TBML and market-access criteria follow the Wolfsberg-ICC-BAFT Trade Finance Principles - the document that defines what a bank's own compliance function will test. Since 2026 market access is part of collateral quality: goods that cannot clear CBAM, EUDR or RED III requirements at destination lose buyers, and with them their value as security.
What the zones are. Indicative market ranges for structures of a given control profile, with the binding constraint named. The specific advance rate in any transaction is a lender's decision, made against its own policies, country limits and appetite on the day.
What this is not. A pre-read of declared inputs, with no document verification - not a credit decision, not an offer of finance, and not legal advice. Metal Supply Experts GmbH is a Swiss commission agent under OR 425-438; it structures transactions to bankable standard on a mandate basis. It is not a bank and does not lend. Nothing you enter here leaves your browser unless you export or send it.
Beyond the trade flow
Project, processing, programme, instrument, ESG-linked and M&A transactions each answer to a different underwriting logic - reserve tails and DSCR are not documentary questions, and a warranty package is not a bill of lading. Reducing them to a shared questionnaire would flatten exactly the distinctions that decide financeability, so this tool does not try. The decisive axes of each family are below; MSE assesses them under mandate, against their own frameworks.
Structured review
The pre-read maps the profile; the mandate closes it - custody structure, documentary spine, security package and the lender conversation, run on the principal’s side of the table.
Start the conversation