Gina is responsible for developing new business in Germany, focusing predominantly on the provision of medium-to-long-term (MLT) trade and export credit insurance to the banking industry. Gina has done much work to promote the private CPRI market as an alternative, or complement, to export credit agency (ECA) cover, especially for those regions and markets in which the German ECA is not active. Indeed, the private CPRI market now has proportionally more exposure in high risk emerging markets than the ECAs.

Much of Gina’s work recently has focused on providing insurance cover for financial institutions’ lending to large infrastructure projects in Africa.

A leading figure in the German market

Gina previously ran an independent, privately-owned credit and political risk insurance brokerage, Gina Fitzgerald Limited (GFL), which was acquired by BPL Global in 2008. While London registered, GFL specialised in designing political risk, trade credit and contract frustration insurance for its largely industrial client base in Germany and Austria, counting a number of major German multi-national companies as clients.

Prior to GFL, Gina spent most of her career at HSBC Insurance Brokers Limited, which she joined in 1987, becoming the Director of Credit and Political Risks, International Division, and managing a team of over 20 brokers.

Gina started her career at Grindlays Bank Insurance Brokers in 1983, which was purchased by Citibank and became Citicorp Insurance Brokers in 1985. Remarkably, some of Gina’s first clients have remained clients of hers throughout her career, and are now clients of BPL Global.

Gina is a regular contributor to leading German publications, writing for The German–African Business Association (Afrika-Verein der deutschen Wirtschaft), which is the foreign trade association representing German institutions with an interest in Africa, as well as the VDMA, the association of German plant and machinery builders. She is also a regular speaker at local Trade and Export Finance events.