Credit insurance
Credit insurance pays out when a customer becomes insolvent or simply fails to pay. It is the difference between a bad month and a bad year, and it lets you sell to bigger buyers on better terms than uninsured competitors can.
When you sell to a business on credit terms, you are lending them the money until the invoice is paid. Credit insurance protects that loan.
You insure the invoices you raise to business customers. The insurer agrees a credit limit for each customer, which is the most it will cover on them at any one time. If a covered customer goes into administration or liquidation, or simply fails to pay, the insurer pays you most of what you were owed, usually around 90%.
The limits do work of their own. They tell you how a specialist with far more data views each customer, before you extend the credit, and they can be reduced if a customer starts to weaken.
Most clients find the discipline of insurer credit limits pays for the policy before a claim is ever made.
The policy also does quiet commercial work: banks and invoice finance providers lend more, at better rates, against an insured ledger.
A policy is only as good as the limits underneath it. Through the policy year we manage the credit side with you:
Some of this is now available as self-serve tools. Try Buyer Assessment free.
Sector knowledge
Generic cover misses sector-specific risk. These are the industries where we know the failure patterns, the insurers' appetite and the wordings that matter.
Thin margins, large tickets, leveraged counterparties. We arrange cover that handles fluctuating exposures, back-to-back chains and buyers in jurisdictions where court recovery is theoretical.
Cash committed to production long before invoicing, and order books concentrated in a few customers. Cover sized to real concentration, including pre-delivery cover for binding contracts.
Margins of two or three percent leave no room to absorb a default. Whole turnover cover for high-volume books, with limit decisions fast enough to match your onboarding.
Agencies sit between committed platform spend and slow brand payments. We insure the credit risk in media buying chains, a market where insurer appetite varies widely.
Contractors paid weekly, clients invoiced monthly. Cover that protects the funding gap and works alongside your invoice finance facility, on the same limits.
If you sell on credit terms, the risk is insurable in principle. Ask us and we will give you a straight answer on appetite and price.
Ask about your sector →How it works
Who you sell to, on what terms, where the concentrations are and what has gone wrong before.
We approach every relevant insurer with a properly prepared submission, not a form.
You see the quotes side by side with our recommendation and the trade-offs spelled out.
Limits, monitoring, claims and renewal. The relationship is the product.
Questions
It covers unpaid invoices from your business customers when they become insolvent, or when they fail to pay within a set period after the due date. Some policies also cover political risks on export sales, such as a government blocking payments leaving the country.
Disputed invoices, until the dispute is settled in your favour. Sales above a customer's credit limit. Customers you already knew were in difficulty. Sales to companies you own or control. Claims can also fail if policy conditions are missed, such as the deadline for reporting overdue accounts.
The most the insurer will cover on a particular customer at any one time. The insurer sets it using its own data, which often includes payment experience you will never see in a credit report. Limits can be appealed with better information, and can be reduced if a customer weakens. A reduction only affects future deliveries.
A set share of the insured loss, usually around 90%. You keep the rest, along with any amount above the customer's credit limit.
Normally as a rate applied to the turnover you insure. The rate depends on your sector, the quality and spread of your customers, your loss history, your credit control, and how much risk you choose to keep. The only reliable way to know the cost is to have your book properly presented to the insurers.
You report the overdue invoice to the insurer by the deadline in your policy. The insurer often tries to collect it first. If the customer becomes insolvent, or the debt is still unpaid when the waiting period ends, you submit a claim with the invoices and proof of delivery, and the insurer pays the insured share.
Often, if a few customers make up a large share of your sales, or one bad debt would wipe out a meaningful part of the year's profit. It makes less sense if you sell mainly to consumers or take payment upfront. Run your biggest customer through Buyer Assessment first, and we will tell you plainly if insurance is not worth buying.
A broker works for you, not the insurer. We compare what the main insurers will offer on your actual customers, negotiate the wording, appeal declined limits and handle claims with you.
Run them through Buyer Assessment, free, then tell us what you found. If insurance is not worth buying for your book, we will say so.
