Large company failures lift UK credit insurance claims: Atradius

By Jemima Denham Oct 13 (The Insurer) — A rise in trade credit insurance claims, despite broadly stable UK insolvency levels, reflects pressure from large individual businesses rather than a wave of defaults, said Owen Bassett, risk underwriting manager at Atradius. Bassett said claims have increasingly been driven by larger companies. "You can have volume coming through where you've got lots of small companies failing," said Bassett. "What we've had in the last five years since COVID has been not that volume of claims at the lower end, but regularly hitting 'torpedo claims', which are larger companies failing." He said that corporates fail more often due to liquidity issues rather than profitability issues, with businesses vulnerable when funding lines are withdrawn or supply-chain pressures intensify. "What you do see is funding lines being removed or at a more punitive cost. And that definitely does contribute to failure," said Bassett. "Key support of cash flow when it's pulled away, quite frankly, failure is almost inevitable sometimes." England and Wales recorded 3% fewer insolvencies in August than the prior month but administrations were 60% higher year on year, according t