For ICBA's global team, when implementing long-term trade credit insurance solutions, winning isn’t everything; competing is

By Rob Downey

A successful NCAA Division I and U.S. Olympic men’s basketball coach is reputed to have said, "I don’t recruit winners." Instead, he looked for the competitive kid, the one who indicated a willingness to prepare daily for a chance to succeed at a more intense challenge than any previously experienced.

If you have learned nothing else in coming through the global financial downturn, you have learned at least what the famous coach implied: "winners" are a dime a dozen. That is, many of the people in your purview – whether peers, supervisors, clients, lenders, or underwriters – were winners in 2007, i.e., they were at their best when times were good. Some of these erstwhile winners were probably “found out” during the 2008-09 crisis, uncovered by the advent of hardening circumstances.

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Mix the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and high credit insurance claims, and the result: Credit Over-Cooked

By Kirk Cheesman

While the Australian economy, generally speaking, was stimulated during 2009 to a quick recovery, there were more underlying insolvencies and bad debt occurrences than ever before.

ICBA Australia’s claims statistics for 2009 show credit insurance claims jumped by close to 300% on the previous year.

Keeping the above in mind, there are a few current items to note:

1. Many businesses, during the GFC, reduced staffing levels, stock and overheads to cope with the reduction in trade.

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Credit insurance claim busters – the dreaded trade dispute is increasingly being used as an excuse not to pay

by Mark Attley

In his recent blog post, my ICBA colleague, Rob Downey talks about the claims process in a credit insurance policy and cites his top ten reasons why claims are denied.

In today’s economic environment, my colleague Ron Doyle, another ICBA blogger, has pretty much taken up full time residence in our claims handling room at our head office in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Ron is a seasoned credit insurance vet with over 30 years experience in the credit insurance business. Having worked through at least five recessions and possibly four mini recessions, he has a myriad of unusual claims stories.

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