Damian Austin, BACB’s Head of Trade Finance, spoke at the recent GTR London Africa conference, held on November 2nd at County Hall. The event, focusing on how banks, traders and other institutions can come together to better support development on the continent, brought together a range of delegates from a variety of organisations.
Damian featured in a panel discussion entitled “Stretching the limits – trade and political risk insurance in times of increased volatility”, covering the ways specialist banks such as BACB, Insurers and Brokers can collaborate to facilitate trade in emerging markets. For financial institutions and corporates, CPRI insures against non-payment risk, asset seizure and confiscation, and payment repatriation. It is increasingly being used in Africa to maintain and support trade flows where BACB has the ability to finance trade in 24 markets
Together with representatives from other specialist banks, underwriters and CPRI brokers, Damian discussed how the sector is currently undergoing a period of growth and innovation, bringing higher capacity, greater transparency, and more collaboration to the continent. The panel also discussed current pinch points in market capacity and other challenges to underwriting risk in the region, and what can be done more broadly to bridge the current trade finance gap.
Partnerships between insurance providers and banks was discussed in detail; with brokers, underwriters and bankers agreeing that together these partnerships are actively helping to secure more trade financing for the region.
For specialist trade finance banks like BACB, credit insurance enables them to handle larger ticket transactions, this mitigates credit risk, and is increasingly used as a tool to manage capital utilisation and maximise the returns on capital deployed. Ultimately this allows the bank to finance a higher volume and higher value of trade flows, creating a greater pool of liquidity for its clients operating in African markets.
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