Commodities finance (CF) refers to structured short-term lending to finance reserves, inventories, or receivables of exchange-traded commodities (e.g. crude oil, metals, or crops), where the exposure will be repaid from the proceeds of the sale of the commodity and the borrower has no independent capacity to repay the exposure. This is the case when the borrower has no other activities and no other material assets on its balance sheet. The structured nature of the financing is designed to compensate for the weak credit quality of the borrower. The exposure's rating reflects its self-liquidating nature and the lender's skill in structuring the transaction rather than the credit quality of the borrower.