Best Export Credit Agency: Coface

Runner-up: Euler Hermes
Commended: Sace
2007 Winner: Finnvera

Export credit agencies (ECAs) face a challenge unique in trade finance. Essential for covering risk in deals where even the biggest banks might otherwise fear to tread they walk the tightrope between public and private. On the one hand, charged with supporting the exports of their countries of origin, while in many cases operating as a privatised, profit-making organisation, too.

Coface has won the TFR Award for Best Export Credit Agency by successfully traversing that tightrope and winning the respect of clients and TFR readers in the process. “I think that the ‘reactivity’ and professionalism of our teams and our customer approach are the key,” says Marc Murcia, Medium Term Director at Coface. That is reflected in the increase in the amount covered in 2007 – almost €9bn, while new commitments rose to €15bn compared with just €9bn in 2006.

Certainly, Coface has been involved with a number of particularly challenging big deals in the past year, including the $2.8bn deal to finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and associated infrastructure on the coast of the Gulf of Aden in Yemen. In this deal, it worked with ECAs K-EXIM and NEXI, covering South Korea and Japan respectively.

During 2008, Coface implemented a programme of simplifications and modifications to its products. “In particular, we have simplified our guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises, and increased the ceiling on our foreign content rules. We have also introduced new guarantees for services and intellectual property revenues and published guidelines for local currency financing,” says Murcia.

Coface also has plans to expand factoring services into all the countries in which it offers its three main business lines – credit insurance, information and receivables management. In June, it extended factoring services to five more countries – China, Australia, Israel, Czech Republic and Slovakia – after opening in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong in the last year.

“We have simplified our guarantees... and increased the ceiling on our foreign content rules.”

Marc Murcia, Coface