Credit Insurance Companies

The end of the nineteenth century, saw the development of credit insurance, mostly in Western Europe between the first and Second World Wars.several credit insurance companies were founded in every country, some of them even managing the political risk to export on behalf of their State. Over the 90s, a concentration of the trade credit insurance market took place and three groups accounted for over 85% of the global credit insurance market. The main players focused on Western Europe, but eventually and rapidly expanded towards Eastern Europe, Asia and the Americas.The main players were, Atradius, a merger between NCM and Gerling Kreditversicherung, later renamed Atradius after it was de-merged from the Gerling insurance group. Euler Hermes, a merger between the two credit insurance companies of the Alliaz Group. CESCE, formerly a Spanish government sponsored institution established in 1966, now part of the CESCE GROUP, and COFACE, formerly a French government sponsored institution established in 1946.
Compagnie Française d’Assurance pour le Commerce Extérieur (COFACE), after being founded in 1946, was subsequently privatised by the government and continued as a commercial enterprise. Today, however, COFACE is owned by the band group Natixis. The insurance company provides guarantees or insurance on accounts receivable coming out of sales of commercial goods and services on credit terms of 30 day and 60 day time scales especially for export companies, and sometimes on longer time scales. COFACE manages state guarantees for exports by French corporations, while providing other international support for exporters. As a world leader in trade-credit information and protection, COFACE serves 85,000 clients in 83 countries, and has been expanding into the related fields of trade finance, including factoring, and accounts receivable management. COFACE extends its provisions to the UK, Ireland, North America and Australia.

Filed under: Uncategorized on February 2nd, 2012