Trade Expert AI: Free AI Assistant for Trade Finance and Commodity Trade (2026)
Trade Expert AI is a free members-only AI assistant that answers commodity trading, trade finance, UCP 600 and ISBP 821, Incoterms 2020, sanctions, HS classification, shipping and insurance questions with practitioner-level precision.
What Trade Expert AI is
It behaves like a senior global trade practitioner rather than a general chatbot. Questions are answered in the language of the rule book that governs them: ICC article references for documentary credits and guarantees, Incoterms 2020 rule letters for delivery and cost allocation, tariff and valuation law for duty questions, and the published list sources for sanctions and export controls. Where the answer depends on something that changes, it states an as-of date and cites the official source instead of asserting a figure from memory.
It also knows the rest of SSLT Global. When a question has a number behind it, it points you at the calculator that produces that number, so an LC pricing question ends with the LC confirmation fee per quarter calculation rather than a range, and a discrepancy question ends with the UCP 600 discrepancy check it needs.
What it does that a general chatbot does not
Situation Room briefs
Ask for the current position on a commodity, a route or a country and you get a structured brief rather than prose: sanctions and export-control status, logistics and war-risk exposure, financing and insurance appetite, and the contractual protections worth inserting before you sign.
Multi-stakeholder answers
The same question can be answered from the buyer's, the seller's, the confirming bank's and the cargo insurer's point of view. That is how a discrepancy argument, a force majeure claim or an Incoterm change is actually settled, because each party is reading a different rule book.
Copy-paste clause wording and presentation checklists
Answers come with usable output: clause text you can paste into a draft, and document-by-document presentation checklists built on UCP 600 and ISBP 821 practice so a set of documents is checked before it reaches the bank counter.
A daily current-intelligence brief
Each morning the assistant is briefed on new or amended sanctions designations, tariff and trade-remedy actions, freight and route disruptions, trade-finance market notes and war-risk or cargo insurance signals, so it starts from the current environment rather than a stale training cut-off.
Conversation history for signed-in members
Every conversation is stored against your own account as a named thread with its own web address, so a deal discussion can be reopened weeks later and continued where it stopped. The assistant reads your earlier threads to remember preferred clauses, governing law, banks and commodities, which is what makes the second conversation faster than the first. Threads are private to your account and can be renamed or deleted at any time.
Questions you can actually ask
- Does FCA or CIF work better for a bulk shipment to a landlocked buyer?
- What is the ACT/360 day-count convention for a EUR usance facility?
- How would a confirming bank read this force majeure clause differently than the buyer?
- Give me a Situation Room brief on thermal coal from Indonesia to India, including war-risk and freight exposure.
- Which HS heading applies to blended iron ore fines, and what documentary evidence of origin will EU customs expect?
- Draft a presentation checklist for a CFR credit calling for a full set of original bills of lading and a certificate of origin.
- Is a 50% rule ownership analysis needed before we open a credit for this counterparty, and what would the confirming bank ask for?
Start using it
Open Trade Expert AI and sign in
Access is free for members. Sign-in exists so your conversation history can be stored against your account and so usage stays attributable, not to charge for the assistant.
Decision support only. Not formal legal, compliance or banking advice.
Frequently asked questions
Does FCA or CIF work better for a bulk shipment to a landlocked buyer?#
FCA generally works better. CIF is a maritime-only rule that ends the seller's carriage obligation at a destination port, so a landlocked buyer still has to arrange and insure the inland leg with no contractual cover under the sale term. FCA hands over at a named place, keeps the carriage contract with the buyer who controls the inland movement, and avoids the ICC warning against using CIF where delivery is not at a port.
What is the ACT/360 day-count convention for a EUR usance facility?#
EUR usance discounting conventionally uses ACT/360: actual days elapsed divided by 360. A 90-day EUR acceptance at 5% therefore costs 5% x 90/360 = 1.25% of face value, whereas the same tenor on ACT/365 costs 1.233%. USD and AED also follow ACT/360, while GBP, INR, JPY, SGD, HKD and CAD follow ACT/365, a swing of roughly 1.4% of the interest amount on a 90-day discount.
How would a confirming bank read a force majeure clause differently than the buyer?#
The buyer reads force majeure as relief from performance under the sale contract. A confirming bank reads it as irrelevant to its own undertaking: under UCP 600 Article 34 a bank assumes no liability for the underlying contract, and Article 36 addresses only interruption of the bank's own business. If documents conform, the confirming bank must pay regardless of a force majeure dispute between buyer and seller, which is why sellers push for confirmation rather than clause protection.
Can Trade Expert AI tell me whether a counterparty is sanctioned?#
It screens the name against the OFAC, EU, UK and UN list data published on SSLT Global and explains the ownership, control and sectoral-designation tests that apply, with an as-of date. It is decision support, not a compliance determination: a designation, a 50% rule analysis or a licence question must be confirmed with the official list source and your bank's or counsel's compliance team before you act.
Will it draft a full SPA, LOI, ICPO or NCNDA for me?#
It points you to the SSLT Global template library first, then asks which clauses, tables or specifications you want changed before producing anything. That keeps you on a document your counterparty's bank is more likely to accept, and keeps clause-level help available for wording you need to negotiate.
Is Trade Expert AI free, and is my conversation saved?#
It is free for signed-in members with no usage fee. Conversations are saved to your own account as named threads with their own web addresses, so you can reopen a deal discussion later and the assistant can refer back to your preferred clauses, governing law and past questions. Only you can read your threads.