Leading UK Credit Insurance Broker

Credit insurance provides cover against losses due to their customers/debtors being unable or unwilling to pay their debts. Usually, this occurs when the debtor becomes insolvent. This removes a significant element of risk from a company when providing a service or expanding their business. There are different types of credit insurance depending on the size and nature of your business, including domestic credit insurance, catastrophe credit insurance and international trade credit insurance.

We use our expertise and buying power as specialist credit insurance brokers to negotiate the best possible terms and conditions with the company that most fully meets your unique and specific requirements. We are not tied to any one insurer, and we will give you impartial and expert advice from our panel of underwriters, with a recommendation on which will be your best long-term partner.

Unlike certain other classes of insurance, there is no loading of the premiums in order to pay for our service. Specialist credit insurance brokers introduce and manage around 85% of all credit insurance business. This buying power and general influence makes it completely uneconomic and not commercially viable for any insurance company to offer discounts in return for dealing with them on a direct basis. Even if there was a premium loading, would you prefer to have to call a help line with promises of a call back and how important your call is or to be able to speak directly to experts, who are working directly for you?

The main benefit of credit insurance for a business is that it protects them from bad debt. With credit insurance, you can expand your business or provide services safe in the knowledge that you will be paid, hopefully by the customer or failing that by your insurer. You are then able to maintain control over your cash flow and finances by concentrating sales and marketing efforts on customers where payment is guaranteed.

We have a very long-standing client who over the last 20 years have expanded from export sales of £1,000,000 a year to over £100,000,000 a year in 120+ countries. Credit insurance allows them to offer extended payment terms to new customers and their bank is happy to back the additional working capital requirement on the back of the debts being insured.

One of the other key benefits is that a number of the major credit insurance companies offer inclusive debt recovery as part of their service. It is often hard enough to collect UK debts and harder still in another country with language and differences in legal systems. With insured debt recovery the insurer takes over after an agreed period, typically within 90 days of the due date and they attempt an amicable solution. If this fails, they will instigate legal action, with the large majority of the costs covered under the credit insurance policy.

Stronger banking negotiations are another benefit of having credit insurance for your business, as debts that are insured by an A rated insurance company provide guaranteed collateral to banks. This could then translate into increased funding for your business and at a more competitive rate.

In order to be protected from bad debt, any business that sells goods or a service on credit terms to other companies, no matter the industry or size of the business, would potentially need credit insurance. If the failure of a customer to pay their invoice would have an impact on your business and cash flow, then you are likely to need credit insurance.

A credit insurance broker uses their expertise to negotiate the best possible terms and conditions for a company, in line with the specific requirements of that business. The benefit of working with a credit insurance broker is that they are not tied to a specific insurer, but will offer impartial and expert advice. At Paul Humphreys Credit Insurance, we have over 30 years of experience in the industry and apply this to get to know our clients, understand their business and go above and beyond what is expected of us to provide an exceptional service. You will never be a policy number; no hold music and your call really are important to us. There will be no need for multiple calls or to explain to several different people. We will understand your business and be able to help you immediately with expert and independent advice.

If your business is ever facing a potentially catastrophic claim, then we will manage this for you to ensure the best possible outcome in the shortest possible time. The key is understanding what is required and then first-class presentation to get the submission of all of the required information right the first time.

We can help you if you ever have credit insurance issues from your own suppliers in the UK and Europe. As a credit insurance broker, we will advise you on customers having payment difficulties and particularly how to ensure that you continue to trade within and comply with the terms and conditions of the policy.

The additional services that we offer include credit limit support, such as advice on what is needed to obtain cover, when to not apply and stick with discretionary cover, requesting and supplying new information, challenging marginal decisions and chasing up pending requests.We also monitor your key customers for significant changes, both positive and negative, as well as offering advice on countering fraud. A market review as required at renewal with the leading insurance companies is also provided. Finally, in a normal, pre Covid world we would always visit all our clients at least once every year.

The main types of credit insurance are as follows:

• Whole Turnover Insurance - credit insurance that covers all, or the majority of, a company’s turnover. There is an agreed excess per claim that is based on a combination of the spread of the risk, historic bad debts and the impact that a higher or lower excess has on the premium. Generally, we would be looking at a minimum excess of 10% of a claim. There would be some level of insured debt that is covered at your discretion by following your own credit control procedures, which is referred to as a discretionary limit.

• Catastrophe Credit Insurance - a credit insurance policy that covers exceptional losses, generally used by large companies who can accept and manage an agreed level of bad debts, but want protection against either an exceptionally large bad debt or a series of losses that would cause them issues with their own profitability, banking covenants or solvency.

• Specific Account Insurance - provides cover against a single company or group of companies that a business has a large amount of financial exposure to. The underwriting criteria is quite tight for this concentrated cover and tends to be available on large and established and profitable companies. The criteria are not the same under whole turnover where a wider spread of risk will often allow cover to be written where it would not qualify under a specific account.

• Export Credit Insurance - protects your business by mitigating the financial risks associated with foreign trade, which can include political risks and debt recovery.

• Domestic Credit Insurance - protects your business against losses incurred through trade in the UK, CI & IOM.

• International Trade Credit Insurance - helps you to expand your business safely on an international scale.