Paul Humphreys Credit Insurance Services

There is a very limited market into which we can place either one-off larger contracts or one or more of a company’s largest customers.

Due to the selective nature of this risk the underwriters tend to be much more stringent in their requirements, it would be fair to say that at the moment there are very few companies who would be considered a good enough risk to offer single account cover on, Tesco and Waitrose come to mind as being the type of risk that would be acceptable, but we don’t get any enquiries for this calibre of risk.

Underwriters would normally like to see a minimum credit limit requirement of £250,000 .There is no excess with this type of policy and the insured percentage in the event of a claim is normally 100%. We often find that whilst we are unable to place a specific policy we are able to arrange cover as part of a whole turnover or catastrophe policy.

Large or Excessive Exposure

This type of policy is suitable for a company who have a large or excessive exposure to a single company or group of companies. Premium rates tend to range from 2% - 5% of the required credit limit, some companies have minimum annual premiums of £10,000- £15,000 for this type of business.

It is also possible to arrange cover in order to protect against consequential losses that might arise in the event of the insolvency of a key supplier. For example failure to complete an order in time due to the failure of a supplier could be expensive and potentially very damaging if either legal action or penalty clauses were invoked. In order to consider a policy we really only need the same information as is required for a specific account policy. Before an indication of terms is given we must be able to demonstrate a clearly identifiable and quantifiable risk.

Additional Top up Cover

It is possible to arrange top up cover to an existing credit limit issued by another company. The cover is expensive and can be hard to come by at the moment.

It is not available if the holding insurer has issued a nil credit limit. But if you do have an approved limit that you can not get increased by your exiting insurer we can look at top up cover for you. Generally for a maximum additional amount of £100,000 or for no more than an addition 50% on top of the existing limit.We need the holding insurers permission to put this cover in place.