Premiums on good trade credit names still look soft. Claims have been quieter across much of the market. Combined ratios at Allianz Trade, Atradius, and Coface have been running under 100%.

You asked for a named-buyer limit. The carrier came back with less. That is not a smaller yes. It is a ceiling. Everything you ship above it is uninsured.

A DCL lets the policyholder self-approve coverage on smaller buyers up to a carrier-set ceiling, without waiting on an individual underwriting decision for every account.

Underwriters weigh a paid claim as evidence feeding forward into their risk assessment, the same way they use the portfolio-level signals we covered in the discussion of buyer risk concentration.

Every conversation about trade credit insurance eventually arrives at the same question: what happens when a buyer actually defaults?

TCI renewal is typically framed as an administrative event — a policy that needs to be re-placed each year. That framing understates what is actually happening. Renewal is when your coverage structure, your limit framework, your conditions, and your premium are all on the table simultaneously.

Trade credit insurance is a 12-month contract. The risk environment it covers does not operate on a 12-month calendar. Buyer creditworthiness shifts.

The buyer credit risk landscape in 2026 looks materially different from what it did 18 months ago.

Your buyer is 90 days past due. You have trade credit insurance. You expect to file a claim and recover the loss.

There are plenty of CFOs and credit managers at exporting companies who have looked at trade credit insurance, understood the concept, and then done nothing. Not because TCI isn't a fit — in many cases it clearly is — but because they don't know what starting the process actually involves.

Here is a scenario that plays out more often than most exporters want to admit. A company has thirty active buyers. The top three account for sixty percent of outstanding receivables.

Open-account terms can help exporters win business. They can also move a meaningful amount of credit risk onto the exporter before cash is collected. Once goods ship and payment is due later, the exporter is no longer only managing a sale.

An overdue export invoice is easy to underestimate. At first, it may look like a simple reminder issue. The buyer says payment is coming next week.

Exporters often think about payment risk through the buyer. Will the buyer have the ability to pay? Will they have the willingness to pay?

Foreign receivables can look like a source of working capital. An exporter ships, invoices the buyer, and waits for payment. On paper, the receivable is an asset.