The International Credit Insurance and Surety Association (ICISA) today publishes ICISA 100: Celebrating 100 years of helping global trade flow, a report setting out the economic contribution of trade credit insurance, credit and political risk insurance, and surety bonds, released to coincide with the Association’s annual meetings and centenary celebrations in Vienna.
Founded in 1926, ICISA represents the companies that protect the world’s trade flows and underwrite performance obligations across every major sector and geography. Its members accounted for over EUR 3 trillion in insured exposures related to trade receivables in 2025, and billions more in surety bonds across construction, energy, and infrastructure.
The report is intended for a broad audience: policymakers, regulators, business leaders, and anyone seeking to understand what these products do and why they matter. It explains the mechanics of each product line, examines the role they play in the real economy, and presents direct testimony from a diverse range of companies and financial institutions that use them.
The findings point to six consistent themes across that testimony:
- Access to finance and growth โ companies use these products to extend credit, and improve financing prospects, while being supported when entering new markets and taking on contracts they could not otherwise pursue.
- Diversification of financial counterparties โ surety and insurance capacity supplements bank facilities, preserving banking lines for operational and investment use.
- Working capital and liquidity โ insured receivables serve as higher-quality collateral, and surety bonds replace cash retentions and letters of credit โ together making working capital and liquidity more resilient.
- Risk governance and credit discipline โinsurer-backed credit limits provide an externally validated framework for credit decisions across complex portfolios and support sustainable, resilient expansion.
- Operational responsiveness โ the efficiency and reliability of insurers is critical for clients navigating challenging economic environments.
- Deep partnership and market knowledge โ the strongest client relationships go well beyond the transactional, with insurers functioning as long-term business partners with shared understanding of the client’s markets and risk profile.
Taken together, the report demonstrates the substantial contribution that credit insurance and surety make to global trade and investment, and the important role they can play in helping businesses, governments, and other organisations manage risk, support growth, and meet the challenges of a changing world.
