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Trade Credit Insurer Coface Opens Australia Office
(BestWire Services Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Credit risk insurer Coface Group said it launched operations in Australia in a move to expand its global network of offices.
The Paris-based specialist in domestic and export credit insurance said it would offer credit and political risk analysis, customer monitoring, collections management and receivables financing in the Australian market.
James Melrose was named general manager of Sydney-based Coface Australia.
"We currently have a 10% share of the Australian market," Melrose said in a statement. "We expect to grow the portfolio and increase our market share with a concentrated effort through our new direct sales initiatives and our broker community. We expect to make inroads through our international clients and directly into export commodity markets where we have previously had no presence."
According to Chief Executive Officer Jerome Cazes, Coface has been underwriting trade going into Australia for the past 60 years. "We have identified a very low usage of credit insurance in the country, which is putting exporters at risk," he said in a statement. "We are launching our operation here with the intention to address this risk."
Cazes said less than 5% of registered companies in Australia are exporters. "This figure is very low, and we hope our presence in the market will help support the government in its goal to increase the volume of exports," he said.
Last month, Coface acquired a majority stake in Business Data Israel, an Israeli provider of credit information that Coface said would give it a strengthened presence in the region. Coface said BDI is the leading provider of credit information in Israel, with a database of 350,000 businesses. The acquisition is part of Coface's ongoing strategy of "progressive worldwide deployment of trade receivables services," the insurer said (BestWire, Jan. 17, 2006).
In the first half of last year, Coface launched a three-year program it says is designed to deploy its platform of business lines to various markets. As part of that program, Coface launched a business in Italy; developed receivables management in Belgium and the Netherlands; and acquired LEID, a credit insurer in Lithuania.
Coface, which said it underwrites $300 million in trade worldwide, now has a direct presence in 60 countries.
Coface's trade-credit competitors also are pursuing rapid geographic growth. Euler Hermes, another Paris-based company, recently entered an agreement with Turkish insurer Koc Allianz to gain a foothold in Turkey (BestWire, Dec. 30 2005).
Earlier, Euler Hermes continued its expansion into Eastern Europe with the opening of branches and service companies in the three Baltic states. The group established local offices in each of the three states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- shortly after announcing it had opened a representative office in Moscow. The Baltic offices are located in the countries' respective capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius (BestWire, Sept. 7, 2005).
Euler Hermes Kreditversicherungs-AG currently has a Best's Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior).
(By David Pilla, senior associate editor, BestWeek: David.Pilla@ambest.com)
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