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Leading specialist credit and political risk insurance (CPRI) broker BPL Global unlocks Lloyd’s market capacity for credit risk cover for Japanese operations.

BPL Global has led the way by establishing a binding authority with Lloyd’s Japan Inc. (LJI) dedicated solely to covering credit risks from Japan, using capacity from global insurer MS Amlin as the lead syndicate on the binder which any Lloyd’s syndicate is also able to join. Under this arrangement, BPL Global is now able to facilitate credit insurance cover with Lloyd’s for the Japanese subsidiary companies of its global clients from London via LJI. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lloyd’s, LJI acts as a local coverholder for managing agents in London and is able to issue local policies to Japanese insureds on behalf of Lloyd’s syndicates.

The development comes in response to an uptick in demand from clients for a seamless global insurance solution that can cover their Japanese subsidiaries with Lloyd’s-rated security on a direct basis.

A major European bank with shipping operations in Japan has now become the very first BPL Global client to benefit from a policy issued under the binding authority, receiving credit insurance cover for a seven-year policy term. Importantly, the policy wording follows the client’s usual template and is subject to English law in line with all their other insurance business placed through BPL Global. BPL Global did not have any direct contact with the Japanese insured or conduct any activities in Japan as the policy condition was procured by the bank’s European headquarters.

Ordinarily, Japanese insurance regulation requires a local policy to be issued for all direct insurance. Lloyd’s is unique amongst London market insurers in being able to issue local policies for Japanese insureds via LJI, which is licensed as a General Agent in Japan and acts under binding authorities established with Lloyd’s syndicates. This arrangement gives Japanese insureds immediate access to Lloyd’s security and removes the need for a fronting arrangement to be established by an insurer locally licensed in Japan in order to access London market capacity, which can bring additional complexity and cost.

The binding authority established with LJI and led by MS Amlin can cover cross-border credit insurance transactions within the Credit (CR) and Contract Frustration (CF) risk codes. The binding authority’s terms and conditions can be freely amended to cater for the coverage needs of other Japanese insureds, and any Lloyd’s syndicate can be added to the binder via endorsement.

“We are delighted to secure this market leading opportunity and cater to the rising demand among our clients for seamless, straightforward insurance cover across their global operations – irrespective of territory,” said Sian Aspinall, Managing Director at BPL Global. “Lloyd’s is uniquely placed in being able to underwrite Japanese business from London via LJI, and so this is a huge step forward in terms of unlocking Lloyd’s market capacity for insureds operating in the country.”

Mineyuki Yokota, Underwriting Service Director at LJI, added, “This solution opens up new routes for Lloyd’s underwriters to provide credit insurance in Japan and provides myriad benefits for internationally operating companies. We hope that this latest credit insurance policy will be the first of many so we can continue to build capacity for Japanese risks.”

Jack Keatings, Underwriter at MS Amlin, said, “As a binding authority specifically set up for credit insurance, this represents a significant step forward for the CPRI market, and for client servicing more generally. Increased competition promotes healthy market dynamics – something that should be welcome by both insureds and insurers alike.”

 

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The human consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are all too clear. The full economic impact of the various government lockdowns in place around the world are yet to emerge. However, even at this stage it is certain that the impact on the global economy will be massive: probably beyond any of our experiences. The impact will be felt everywhere, including on the private insurers with whom we place our clients’ business. What shape will these insurers be in when we emerge from the crisis? Will the private insurance market join the list of sectors seeking government bail outs?

The answer is very simple. The private insurers will be impacted by the crisis, including obviously in our sector, but we are very confident that the private insurance market globally will emerge in sound financial shape with private sector insurers generally able to meet the commitments they have made to policyholders. The reason is simple: private insurers aim not to make promises they cannot keep.

However, the wider insurance market will undoubtably suffer some adverse publicity. This will arise because the business interruption (BI) policies companies typically buy will usually not have responded to the pandemic. Even businesses that have been forced to close their doors during the government lockdowns will have been disappointed. They will have usually found that either the BI cover is only triggered by direct physical loss of damage to its own property, whether by fire, flood, or other perils; or that pandemics are specifically excluded; or both. While “non-damage” BI is often discussed, such coverage remains rare in general insurance policies. Policyholders, commentators and politicians are already asking: why?

The answer is the one given above: our industry is not in the habit of making promises it cannot keep.

In explanation, we need to look at numbers, and specifically at the difference (in US Dollars) between a million, a billion (a thousand million) and a trillion (a thousand billion). To many people these figures are simply mind-boggling: so large they are often confused. But we in the insurance market are clear about the difference, and in the context of the global property/casualty insurance sector:

  • A million US dollars is a rounding error: an immaterial sum at the industry level.
  • A billion US dollars is a material amount, but quite comfortably dealt with at the industry level. Every year the global industry expects multiple catastrophe losses that individually cost the industry billions in claims. The USD 140 billion of claims that emerged in the US from the 2017 hurricane season and other natural disasters was unusually large, but manageable: by the end of 2017, the global private (re)insurers had taken the same bet on the 2018 hurricane season it had just lost in 2017.
  • But a trillion US dollars is a big number. The total annual premium of the global property casualty (non-life) insurance market (home, motor, small commercial, large industrial and specialty – including the very small CPRI market) is about USD 2.2 trillion only. The surplus of the reinsurance market (the industry’s emergency buffer) is about USD 800 billion: a lot; but not bottomless.

The industry does not routinely offer non-damage BI cover for losses such as pandemic because industry leaders have fully recognized that in a matter of months the losses globally would be measured in the USD trillions. The American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) has calculated that just for small US businesses with 100 or fewer employees, non-damage BI losses from the pandemic, if covered, would amount to between USD255 to 431 billion per month (43 to 72 times the monthly premiums for property/casualty insurance policies in the US). Take those projections to all businesses in all countries, and it becomes clear that the industry has been quite right not to promise to cover these types of loss. Indeed, it would be immoral for insurers to take premiums for such risks today, knowing that they could not keep the promises made tomorrow. The insurance industry has always recognised that some risks are simply too big for it to deal with: nuclear war and war between the Five Great Powers are ones we are all familiar with in our line of business. Pandemic risk is in the same category: it must be left to governments to step in.

The insurance industry will of course be impacted by the pandemic and the government lockdowns, including heavily in specialist classes like travel insurance, event cancellation and of course credit insurance where policies do not normally exclude these types of event. Some non-damage BI losses will emerge too. However, though losses could well be very material in certain areas, these exposures have generally been taken on prudently, and the financial impact on the overall market will be manageable.

You will read other stories about the wider insurance industry. In the USA, particularly, there are inevitably attempts by aggressive lawyers to find BI cover where none was given; and there are even legislative initiatives in some states retrospectively to change the terms of policies to include non- damage BI for pandemics. Some of these attempts and initiatives may even succeed. However, contrary to the impression some like to project, the US political establishment has as much common sense as the rest of us. They are unlikely to allow a few local politicians with an eye to the main chance to put the US and global insurance industry in the position that it cannot meet the promises it HAS made to policyholders, because it is required to honour promises it has NOT made.

There will also be fair criticism of the wider insurance sector. There is no doubt we can play a bigger part in future in dealing with these types of pandemics. Though most of the bill for losses flowing from global pandemics, due to their sheer size, must inevitably still fall to governments, there is a case for conventional BI insurance policies being the delivery mechanism for some of this government support going forward. Similar mechanisms are already in place, for example for terrorism insurance, where government programs like Pool Re in the UK and TRIA/TRIPRA in the USA sit behind cover provided via conventional private sector insurance policies. Such mechanisms exist for other catastrophic exposures. For example, Spain’s Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros (CCS) deals not only with man-made disasters like terrorism, but natural disasters like earthquake and windstorm.

These examples of public/private co-operation are not new. In both the First and Second World Wars marine insurance risks were considered too great by Lloyd’s and other private insurers, and they were assumed by the UK government (80% reinsured in the First World War and 100% in the Second). In both cases though, the commercial infrastructure of Lloyd’s and the London market was kept in place to deliver and administer the policies in the normal way.

When it comes to pandemics, while we have recognized that the risk is too large for our industry to bear, we have perhaps not done enough. Specifically, we have not sat down with governments and had a productive discussion about how these risks can be dealt with jointly. I am sure the industry will now have those discussions.

So, expect the broad private insurance sector to face some criticism during the crisis. However, generally, this criticism will not come from responsible commentators, who understand the difference between a billion and a trillion, nor from knowledgeable politicians who understand why our industry is not in the business of making promises it cannot keep.

Turning from the bigger picture to nearer home, the specialist CPRI market, mainly insuring non- payment cover for medium and long-term credits and political risks for investments and assets in emerging markets, operates in an area once thought only insurable by ECAs and other government supported insurers. Today, our private insurers now assume part of this burden, including, perhaps counter-intuitively to some, reinsuring many of those government insurers. And of course, our CPRI market will be directly impacted by the changed economic environment brought about not just by the pandemic, but by low oil prices. Our comprehensive policies deal with default, basically regardless of cause: there are generally no exclusions of defaults and insolvencies caused by pandemics in CPRI market policies. So we are likely to see a wave of claims, just as we did in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and the Asian and CIS crises of 1997/98.

But these claims need to be seen in the context of the wider industry of which we are a part. While our class of business is important in supporting trade and investment globally, in the bigger financial picture of the global private insurance market, the CPRI market is small beer. The total premium income of the Berne Union membership, public and private insurers combined, across short term, medium and long term and investment insurance Committees combined, is less than 1% of the global non-life, property casualty insurance market. The aggregate exposure run by the CPRI market is in the low hundreds of USD billions – prudent within the framework of our wider industry. The insurance industry barons, who allocate capital to our sector, follow the industry norm: they only allow the underwriters in our market to make promises that they expect the industry can keep. So even if these claims were to amount to several USD billion in the aggregate (as they did in the wake of the financial crisis twelve years ago), at the wider industry level these are highly manageable amounts.

In these difficult times it is understandable that many of our clients instinctively turn to the ECAs and the government insurers. Indeed, we at BPL Global supported the re-entry of EU ECAs into writing short-term credit insurance in the so called “marketable” risk countries; we agree that ECAs should be strongly supporting their exporters and their financiers as we all emerge from the pandemic resolved to rebuild the global economy. But now is not the time for our clients to turn their backs on the private insurers. It is going to take the combined and complementary efforts of the ECAs, multinationals and the private insurers to help lift the global economy out of the predicament it finds itself in. The private insurers will be part of the solution to the challenges we now face, not part of the problem, because, generally, they will emerge from the crisis in fundamentally sound financial shape.

The pandemic will have illustrated an overarching truth: private insurers are prudent in the exposures they take on: the industry plans to keep the promises it makes. That should be reassuring for all our clients in these troubled times.

Charles Berry, 17th April 2020

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BPL Global is delighted to announce that Peter von Guretzky-Cornitz has agreed to act as an introducer and representative in Germany on a part-time basis working alongside Gina Fitzgerald, to develop credit insurance business involving exporters, banks, Hermes and the CPRI market. He will be focusing particularly on transactions where private insurers can provide coinsurance or reinsurance for the German ECA or where they can provide alternative cover.


Peter worked in the commercial banking industry for 28 years and has spent the last ten years as head of the financial services division of SMS SIEMAG, the Düsseldorf-headquartered manufacturer of steel plants. He will continue to work at SMS Group, responsible for special projects within the finance area.

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Interviewed by London insurance market journal, Insurance Day, senior directors James Esdaile and Sian Aspinall give their perspectives on the PRI market and highlight a new generation of partners at BPL Global.


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Writing for Trade & Export Finance’s Export & Agency Finance Special Report 2014, Charles Berry, Chairman, BPL Global, discusses the changing state of the market for medium and long term (MLT) export credit insurance. Once the preserve of the government export credit agencies (ECAs), the MLT is now a mixed market of ECAs and private insurers, often competing for the same business.


In the article, Berry outlines his vision for MLT cover: a market where the ECAs continue to play a leadership role, particularly for those long term risks for which a proper market has not yet emerged; a market where the ECAs continue to provide capacity and stability, but not price leadership, in the many areas of “non-marketable risk” for which there is now a developed market; and a market where exporters and bankers automatically explore both ECA and private market alternatives, aware that the best answer may be with the private insurers. Berry concludes that if the mixed market is to develop like it should – delivering benefits to clients and supporting global trade and investment – it is essential that it is underpinned by the competitive dynamic of the subscription market.

To read the full article, click here 

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In this Perspectives paper delivered at the February 2013 Insuring Export Credit & Political Risk conference in London, Charles Berry, chairman of BPL Global, explained why exporters seeking medium and long term (MLT) export credit insurance should expect increased choice.


A key driver for change is the continuing growth of the private insurance market and its increasing ability to deliver non-cancellable MLT cover on a comparable basis to government export credit agencies (ECAs). So too is the re-rating of the ECAs proposed by the Basel 3 banking accord, under which ECAs will in future carry the sovereign ratings of their respective governments.

In this paper Charles Berry argues the case for a ‘mixed market’ comprising both the ECAs and private sector insurers. Such is not only possible but a desirable provider of wider choice for policyholders.

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In this cover story in the May 2012 issue of  International Trade Finance Anthony Palmer, deputy chairman of BPL Global, highlights the growth in the market for medium and long term non-payment cover, until now regarded as the preserve of the export credit agencies.

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At a recent panel moderated by the editor of Trade & Forfating Review, Charles Berry, Chairman of BPL Global, explained how Basel II/III compliant Comprehensive Credit Insurance has an increasingly important role to play in supply chain finance.


This feature article was published by TFR in its March 2012 issue.

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As reported by Insurance Insider, Charles Berry, Chairman of BPL Global, spoke at a recent meeting of the London Market Claims Council on the mismatch between insurance cover sold for emerging market property and the risks faced by insured businesses.


“Standard terrorism cover is simply the wrong cover,” Berry said. “The market’s standard terrorism wording excludes everything that the Arab Spring is about.”

Mr Berry went on to call for insurers and businesses with operations in emerging markets to rethink their approach to political violence insurance. Currently, coverage for political violence risk is fractured, with the retention of risk split between the specialist political risk market, the marine, aviation, and property markets, and pure terrorism underwriters. The answer to insuring property in emerging markets, according to Mr Berry, lies in the “broader coverages already available in the political risk market.”

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In this article published in Business Insurance in August 2011 Charles Berry, Chairman of BPL Global, explains how war risk exclusions can materially restrict the value of conventional property insurances for assets in emerging markets.


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