Westpac has reduced its trade finance book in Asian to just a few billion dollars, Lyn Cobley, chief executive of Westpac Institutional Bank said on Friday. Cobley told an analysts' briefing that Westpac's experience of this dimension of its cross-border activities paralleled that of many banks, as trade finance "had not delivered what they were hoping for." The slide show for the presentation was otherwise opaque on all matters relating to Westpac's Asian business, and indeed, for an exercise labelled as "an update to the market". Little fresh data arrived that the bank had not already dropped into the investor discussion pack for the bank's March 2017 half year. "It has been an organic strategy and it has been able to flex up and flex down, and at this point we are dialling down," Cobley told analysts on the trade finance theme. WIB contributed 17 per cent of the Westpac group's cash earnings and had a ROE of 14.1 per cent for the half year ended March 2017. One rationale for the presentation may have been to reassure analysts on matters digital. For example: WIB's employing "a leaner and more agile structure based on service" as well as "partner[ing] with fintechs to deliver new technologies (such as blockchain) and increased delivery speed." The bank is also, Cobley said, "investing alongside the New Payments Platform to deliver improved transaction capability."