Apollo winds down products at Eliant Trade Finance platform after rough year for inventory financing

Apollo Global Management is pulling the plug on certain invoice-financing products at its Eliant Trade Finance platform, a strategic retreat driven by what sources describe as a difficult stretch for the inventory financing market.

The wind-down, disclosed on September 11, specifically targets Eliant’s mid-market accounts receivable and supply-chain finance initiatives. The rest of the platform continues to operate.

What Eliant was built to do

Eliant Trade Finance LP came together in January 2022 as a collaboration between Apollo, its insurance affiliate Athene, and French banking giant BNP Paribas. The premise was straightforward: purchase invoices and provide working capital solutions to businesses that traditional banks often underserve. The platform launched with $1.3 billion in signed programs. Athene and its European counterpart Athora handled the funding side, while BNP Paribas brought structuring and financing expertise to the table.

By 2025, Eliant reported $1.6 billion in new transactions spanning inventory, receivables, and supply chain financing. The platform also expanded its geographic footprint, appointing new leadership in 2024 to push into the Asia-Pacific region.

Why the market shifted

Apollo’s decision to wind down specific Eliant products stems from adverse market conditions in inventory financing rather than any operational failure at the platform itself.

What stays and what goes

The products being wound down are specifically the mid-market receivables and supply-chain finance offerings. Eliant’s other trade finance activities remain operational.

What this signals for the broader market

Traditional banks have been pulling back from trade finance for years, partly due to capital requirements under Basel regulations that make the business less profitable. Alternative lenders like Eliant were supposed to fill that gap.

The $1.6 billion in new transactions Eliant reported for 2025 provides some baseline for gauging the platform’s scale. Losing the mid-market receivables and supply-chain finance components will meaningfully reduce that figure going forward, though the exact impact depends on how much of the transaction volume those specific products represented.

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