Supply chain finance after Greensill
Supply chain finance appears on 101 recent papers, mostly in the finance and operations research journals, but only 32 of them carry a risk, default, disclosure, accounting or fintech keyword, and reverse factoring on one. Since the Greensill collapse, firms must disclose these programmes. Who bears the risk, and does disclosure change pricing?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, "supply chain finance" appears on 101 papers (59 in finance journals, 25 in operations research), and "reverse factoring" on 1. Only 32 of the 101 also carry a risk, default, bankruptcy, disclosure, accounting, fintech, blockchain or platform keyword, and most of those are about blockchain and credit risk models rather than about the programmes' failure modes.
Questions#
- Since the 2023 disclosure rules for supplier finance programmes, did firms that disclose large programmes pay more for debt, or see their payables reclassified?
- When a buyer's finance programme stops, how fast do its suppliers run into distress?
- Do fintech-run programmes price supplier risk, or the buyer's risk alone?
Data that could help#
The new supplier-finance disclosures in annual reports, supplier-customer links, suppliers' payment terms and distress events.
Next step#
Hand-collect the supplier finance disclosures of large US and European firms for 2023–2025 and relate programme size to suppliers' days of receivables.