Secured. Short. Self-liquidating.
We finance identifiable goods in motion, not balance-sheet risk. Every facility is engineered to repay from the completion of a genuine trade—and protected if it does not.
Why commodity trade finance.
Physical trade needs working capital at every link in the chain. Financing it—against real cargo, for short periods, with clear security—produces returns that are largely uncorrelated to public markets and grounded in the real economy.
Short Duration
An average tenor near seventy days means capital recycles quickly and exposure to any single trade is brief and well-defined.
Real Collateral
Lending is secured over identifiable, insured cargo and the receivable it generates—not against goodwill or projections.
Low Correlation
Returns derive from trade activity and structuring, offering diversification from equity and rate-driven assets.
Protection is layered, not assumed.
No single safeguard carries a transaction. We stack independent layers so that the failure of one does not become the loss of capital.
- Conservative advance ratios sized to collateral and adjusted net worth
- Cargo insurance as primary protection; trade credit cover as supplementary
- Loss-payee status held at open-cover policy level as Security Agent
- Co-signatory mandate over the borrower’s collection account
- Charge over receivables, documents of title and trade contracts
- Corporate and personal guarantees where the structure warrants
Risk read in the settlement terms.
How a trade settles tells us most of what we need to know about its risk. We price and structure along a clear hierarchy—from the most secure to the most exposed.
Confirmed L/C
Bank-confirmed irrevocable letter of credit—the strongest settlement assurance.
Letter of Credit
Irrevocable issuing-bank undertaking without third-bank confirmation.
Documents v. Payment
Title documents released only against payment at presentation.
Documents v. Acceptance
Release against a time draft—buyer credit risk enters the structure.
Open Account
Greatest exposure—financed only with the strongest compensating security.
We know who we lend to.
Capital preservation begins with the counterparty. Every borrower and trade is screened against a sanctions and financial-crime framework aligned to OFAC, EU, UN and MAS standards, with diligence calibrated to detect both premeditated and distress-driven fraud patterns.
- Full KYC, AML/CFT and beneficial-ownership verification
- Sanctions screening across major regimes
- Trading-footprint and counterparty-history validation
- Fraud-typology screening tuned to known failure modes
A record earned across cycles.
The founding team’s history is not a backtest. It is capital deployed into real transactions, repaid in full, through multiple market dislocations.
Figures reflect the founding team’s deployment at a predecessor commodity trade finance platform. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
How the return is built.
Returns are constructed additively—a floating base rate plus a credit spread determined by the structure of each transaction, not by market sentiment. The spread is structurally sticky: it reflects payment terms and incoterms, and does not compress when rates fall.
Indicative only, at prevailing base rates. Returns on floating-rate notes move with SOFR; the spread component is set by transaction risk. Net of fund fees. Subject to definitive documentation.
Same yield. A fraction of the duration.
The defining difference is tenor. Where conventional private credit locks capital into multi-year loans that depend on refinancing, commodity trade finance is short-dated and self-liquidating—each facility repays from buyer payment in weeks, not years.
| Characteristic | Broad Private Credit | Altrus CTF |
|---|---|---|
| Asset duration | 3–5 years per loan | 30–180 days (avg ~70) |
| Repayment source | Refinancing dependent at maturity | Self-liquidating from buyer payment |
| NAV transparency | Mark-to-model quarterly | Transaction-by-transaction accrual |
| Rate sensitivity | Spread compression risk as rates fall | Structurally sticky spreads |
| Redemption risk | Gate provisions being triggered | Duration matches notice period |
| Recovery on default | Months-long restructuring | Immediate—cargo and collection-account control |
| Net yield | 8–10% (deteriorating) | 7–9% (structurally supported) |
The point is not a higher headline yield—it is consistency. A strategy that returns steadily and preserves capital compounds more powerfully over time than one that earns more in good years and surrenders it in a bad one.
Representative deals from the portfolio.
Every transaction is self-liquidating, backed by physical goods, and structured around identified buyers and sellers. Gross lending rates reflect what borrowers pay; net investor returns are lower after fund fees and expenses.
Transactions are illustrative of the team’s origination approach at the predecessor platform. Borrower and counterparty identities anonymised. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Understand the structure in detail.
Qualified investors can request our investor materials and a walkthrough of the framework.