Dr. Tom James

Tom James is CEO & CIO and a co-founder of the Trade Flow Funds, the innovative digitised trade finance solution for bulk physical commodity transactions being shipped or stored around the world.

 

After 2 years+ of FinTech development and planning, the Digital Trade Finance Fund for USD deals went live in 2018, operating the new approach to physical commodity trade & Inventory finance. This was followed by the launch of a Euro fund in February 2020.

 

Tom is the business and system architect for the solution which meets both industry needs and investor appetites combining a unique business model with proven risk management approaches, a fund platform, and FinTech for scalability. His co-founders complete the cross-discipline team necessary to develop and operate the trade finance solution and fund, coming from a legal, maritime and I.T. background.

 

He has over 30 years of commercial exposure gained through a broad range of senior executive roles in trading, investment management, commodity finance (Trade and Project) & advisory. He is called upon by governments & multinationals for advice & insight on market developments. In 2014 he was called upon to serve as a Senior Energy Advisor to the United States Department of Defense (TFBSO) and he currently sits on the “Financing Advisory Resources” panel for Enterprise Singapore, the trade development body of the Singapore Government.

 

Tom is a serial Commodity FinTech entrepreneur with a history of combining technology with best practice in order to create innovative industry services & solutions within the Commodity Industry. He is also a successful published author, having documented and shared his deep industry expertise through a series of 9 books and publications with Wiley Finance, Palgrave Macmillan and Springer, including a book focussed on energy and emissions in 2010, and one on biofuels in 2015.

 

Tom holds a PhD from Middlesex University, UK based on the study of "Best practices in the commodity industry within the functional disciplines of trading and risk management”