Trading outlook: an interview with Export Development Canada treasurer Chad Buffel

Export Development Canada recently broke new ground by issuing the country’s first tokenised bond. The government agency’s newly promoted treasurer, Chad Buffel, gives Ian Hall the inside track – and details other innovation priorities

When Export Development Canada (EDC) issued the country’s first tokenised bond using distributed-ledger technology (DLT) a couple of months ago, it was the culmination of joint efforts across multiple organisations.

Chad Buffel was among numerous senior figures at the EDC – whose history stretches back to 1944 – closely involved.

The groundbreaking move is the natural place to begin an interview revealing that the issuance is not the only financial innovation going on at the Ottawa-headquartered agency, which exists to help Canadian businesses to trade internationally.

Edmonton-born Buffel has been with the agency – known as the Export Development Corporation until 2001 – for almost 35 years. He was elevated from assistant treasurer a couple of months ago to succeed a colleague with even greater longevity: Susan Love, who retired after a phenomenal 42 years with the organisation.

We discussed (via Teams) his tips for other public sector authorities considering tokenised bonds, before exploring topics including the EDC’s new treasury management system, green finance explorations and use of artificial intelligence.

Read more from our sister title Global Government Finance: Canadian Government’s export credit agency issues country’s first tokenised bond

Following the (block)chain

The pioneering bond issuance saw the EDC collaborate with the Bank of Canada (central bank) and two commercial banks with the aim of “evaluating how tokenisation and DLT can improve bond issuance and settlement in a real-world setting”.

The initiative, dubbed Project Samara, was structured as what is described as a “limited experiment”, involving the issuance of a single security – a $100m (US$74m) Canadian dollar-denominated bond of less than three months – to a closed investor group. Payments were settled in wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) issued by the Bank of Canada specifically for the transaction.

The central bank spearheaded the initiative. But every issuance needs an issuer: welcome to the stage, EDC.

“It really was more driven by the Bank of Canada’s desire to look at this experiment and see what could manifest out of that,” Buffel says. “I don’t think we [EDC] are necessarily the first obvious choice [from an issuance perspective] because we’re not a broad Canadian dollar issuer, we’re an international borrower.”

“It took longer than I think everyone expected it to,” he reflects, on the journey to the starting line. “But you don’t know what you don’t know until you start down the path.”

Tokenisation & DLT explained: Tokenisation is the process of using new technologies, such as DLT, to issue or represent assets in digital form, known as tokens; DLT (of which blockchain is the most common type) refers to a centralised system for recording, sharing and synchronising transactions across multiple nodes (computers) without a central authority.

‘One step ahead’ of normal

The EDC is a newcomer to blockchain-based bond experimentation but an old stager when it comes to traditional issuances.  

“We have very well-oiled processes for any of the international bonds [and] international currencies that we issue in,” Buffel explains. “We have five main benchmark currencies that we are fairly regular in – we have international settlement programmes globally.”

Project Samara required heightened levels of engagement and education, both internally and externally. In short, it was imperative that all players in the chain understood what was going on and their responsibilities, including regulatory and legal aspects.

Such an issuance can achieve what is known as ‘T+0’ (same day) settlement. This is enabled by the fact that multiple elements, “are all contained within this [blockchain] platform”.

“If you had a T+5 settlement, which is typically what we see in more traditional scopes, it allows everyone time to get everything lined up to make sure the processes work, that information is transmitted to all of the players – whether that’s the dealers, information that’s going to registrar, to the paying agents, custodians, institutions that are receiving funds, or, in this case, receiving bond allocations, certainly at settlement. It’ll be the unwind in the reverse when it comes to maturity,” Buffel explains.

“Looking at all those aspects – well, they’re all different [to a conventional issuance],” he reflects. “We had to be one step ahead of where we might normally have been.”

What happens next

The issuance was a multi-team effort within the EDC, which employs about 2,000 staff across Canada and around the world.

“In treasury we are responsible for the pricing and issuance of the actual instrument,” Buffel explains. “Our team’s role, as it would be normally, is to determine the size, agree on the spread, determine the bond price, assess the order book and investors, determine the investor allocations, and then ‘print’ the product.”

Corporate banking, legal, accounting, risk management and technology teams were also heavily involved.

A decision has yet to be made whether the EDC will issue another bond using blockchain.

“We haven’t ‘matured’ the [first blockchain] bond yet,” Buffel says (it matures on 27 May). “Once that gets finished, I think, the Bank [of Canada] – we will all – want to look at what’s needed.”

“I think the biggest challenge that we’re going to have is the platform, as it exists now, is likely not in a position to be more global – that might be not the right word – but more integrated with broad market participants,” he says. “I think it’s more just a generic challenge that any of these digital bonds have: to make it market worthy, you’re going to need the market itself to be able to participate wholesomely on that. So, what are they comfortable with? On our side [it would be] looking at: how do we represent processes and obligations in a digitalised format that we’re not used to? So, everyone’s going to have to look at those issues.”

‘A lot of moving parts’

Interest in tokenised bonds is growing among public authorities worldwide, as detailed in a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) paper published in July 2025.

The EDC has received interest from organisations keen to learn from its experience.

“It’s hard to say, ‘oh, it was easy’ – no, it’s not easy,” Buffel says, when asked how we would respond. He refers to “a lot of moving parts” and “hurdles”.

“Don’t do it alone,” he continues. “It’s important to have the right partners. I mean, the infrastructure that any one particular entity would need is all-encompassing. And, certainly, it’s going to drive you to doing an awful lot of work.”

“We did this as part of our current manpower,” he continues. “I had five people in my group – and we have a small team of 13 – and they had their regular work to do as well.”

Questions naturally arise about not only what blockchain technology actually is but the ramifications for organisations using it.

“Obviously, you’ve got all of the information […] in the digitised blockchain – it’s there, it’s accessible,” Buffel explains. “So, what can I see? What can you see? What can a regulator see? Or what should they see?”

Read more from our sister title Global Government Finance: Government bond tokenisation market ‘gaining momentum’: BIS analysis

‘A lot more work to do’

“For these things to work, we’re going to have to look at: what are the platforms that do the right things, that are manageable and that people are happy to onboard?” he continues.

“Because this is new and it’s innovative, there’s a lot more in-depth interest in what’s going on and so we’re going to need to figure out, well, how far or how deep do you end up going,” he says.

More broadly on the same theme, he points out that the global blockchain bond environment remains somewhat nascent and it is uncertain which platforms, for example, will emerge as preferred platforms of choice. He poses a series of rhetorical questions.

“Are we going to have 50 different platforms or distributed ledgers in Europe? And which one do you pick? Are they accessible in all currencies, in all jurisdictions? How do the regulators view these things?” he asks.

“I think there’s a lot more work to do,” he continues. “But you really need to look at some of the other barriers and say: ‘listen, this is going to work and be effective and efficient, we need to rethink some of the ways that we’re doing things’. Not to get rid of how we evaluate risk but how do we translate that into something that’s a bit more efficient.”

Treasury management modernisation

The blockchain bond experiment is just one example of how the EDC is increasingly keen to capitalise on financial technologies to improve operations and efficiency.

The organisation has, he reveals, recently appointed Florida-headquartered financial technology company FIS to use its digital treasury management system – an engagement so new he checks with colleagues that he can confirm the news publicly.

“Everything has a lifespan,” Buffel says, explaining the rationale. “Part of this is looking at a revamp of our deal capture system [a technology solution designed to record, validate and manage the full lifecycle of financial transactions], how we look at our payment systems in the back-end, looking at the technologies that we’ve been using, what are the risks that we’re trying to change, or at least avoid in that context.”

“What this project is designed to do is to move us to looking at a cloud-based system, looking at more modern fintech technology,” he says of the transition from an in-house system to the FIS-provided tech. “We’re looking at vendor-structured modules – seeing where and how they can play a more significant role, so that the laywork isn’t necessarily all reliant on what we’re able to do here in house.”

“We are actually building the core systems already,” he continues. “The first big deliverable will be this year, and that will be looking at the whole payments and cash management infrastructure. It will be deployed with redesigned processes and efficiencies. Then the next phase is the system that manages and records the financial instruments that we issue.”

Striking a risk-benefit balance

Conversation shifts to the rapidly advancing digital assets agenda taking the world of finance by storm. To what extent is the EDC plugged into those conversations?

“No-one can ignore those trends,” Buffel says. “One has to have a lens on that and an understanding of where things are at. That was one of the purposes of Samara.”

“Are we going to be doing tokenised bonds in 2027 as a platform? No, no, we’re not. We’re not there yet,” he continues, as we pivot back to the EDC’s recent experience. “But I don’t think anyone is there yet.”

“So, we’re looking forward to the types of things that the broader organisation looks at,” he says. “For us, a lot of that is… how we look at foreign exchange, how we stay on top of what’s happening not just in the main currencies that we look at, but exploring and understanding what the issues might be with regards to how we manage our local currency financing from a risk perspective; and do we have the right tools, do we have the right products, etc, to do that – and then ultimately how can technology play a role in that.”

It is often said in the context of payments that, despite the appeal of ‘frictionless’ payments, at least some friction is required to ensure things don’t go wrong. Buffel alludes to that. “Instantaneous payment transfers [are] great: ‘I got my money right away’,” he says. “Well, what if you didn’t get your money right away? Where did it go? What happens? Risks are much harder to control when it’s instantaneous. A lot of those things have to be better understood.”

Green finance challenges

The EDC has also been innovating in green finance – the trend for using tools such as green bonds, sustainability-linked loans and fintech to accelerate the deployment of clean technologies.

The organisation – which has 16 regional offices across Canada and 25 international representative offices – issued its first green bond in 2014. “We were the first Canadian financial institution to do a green bond product – I did our investor relations roadshow for that bond,” Buffel recalls.

“In that period – and I think it still is – Europe is the hotbed for investors,” he continues. “We did that here, as a way of sparking a lot more interest, certainly in North America.”

The EDC’s website also mentions a “new Sustainable Finance Framework [that] adds capability to issue social, sustainable and transition bonds, in addition to green bonds”.

“We have not issued a sustainable bond yet,” Buffel says. “What we’ll have to determine is: what is the pool of assets that we’re going to be able to reference and ideally reference that over the course of the term. So if it’s a three-year or five-year [bond], making sure that either the projects or ideas that are there fit within that framework or timeframe, and that if we have a 10% on the social side that we can, ideally, have social continue at 10% going forward.”

“EDC’s role and mandate is in the support of Canadian exports. This means not all projects fit within the framework. Our challenge is to encourage those that do,” he explains. “When it comes to transition, the larger challenge is to find or bring awareness to companies about our framework. This can encourage them to seek financing to move themselves into a stronger and better position on the environmental side. We can try and help with ideas and financing structures that can lay a path on that transition route.”

GenAI explorations

Returning to specific technology innovation, the EDC’s latest annual report contains a section on “accelerating digitisation”. It references a “multi-year digital roadmap” launched six years ago and ongoing integration of “generative AI capabilities”.

To what extent is AI important to Buffel’s 13-strong team?

All team members are, he says, being encouraged to try a “vendor-based AI product” (Microsoft Copilot) that is “closed” (“basically, it looks internally but it can’t look externally”) as they look to “become more efficient and effective”.

He believes AI could potentially have most benefit for his team when data points fail to match – specifically, when “one [financial] institution looks at [data] differently than we do” and each party needs to find out why.

“A lot of those things are very small in nature but, obviously, in the financing firm, if you’re off by something, [it] may be insignificant, but the next one may not [be],” he explains. “We talk in basis points – and a basis point means something.”

“The AI will help in a lot of that – the ‘back-view’ stuff, and then also in the front end, processing side of it,” he continues.

“The joy in that, from my side, is that people who are right now having to dig into some of those things – which consumes time – could be focusing on something more, in terms of forecasting, scenario analysis, all those different things,” he says. “AI could probably help a lot on scenario stuff too, provided we have all the right tools in place to do that, which is where we’re trying to head right now.”

Generative AI explained: Generative AI (Gen AI) is a category of AI that enables people or organisations to create new content – such as text, images, audio or code – by learning patterns from existing data.

Potential to ramp it up

Looking to the immediate future, Buffel says that bedding in the new treasury management system is his priority – including “how we can leverage that”.

This could, for example, include exploring how the system is able to support new products or help stay on top of cybersecurity threats.  

He refers to high-profile Mythos AI “scenario” (the company Anthropic said in April that its Claude Mythos tool could outperform humans at some hacking and cybersecurity tasks). “Those are obviously concerns that one has to be aware of,” he says.

Our interview’s allotted time is up. But not without mention of a piece about him (‘Get to know the people of EDC’) published by the EDC last autumn that described him as “EDC-famous for his bold fashion”, as well as for his “impact on the 2SLGBTQI+ community and vibrant personality”.

During our chat he sported a relatively conservative cardigan. “Yeah, yeah, I could have ramped it up quite a bit more,” he grins.

This article was originally published by our sister title Global Government Finance.