Whether you are a credit risk underwriter or a credit risk manager, increasingly it is expected of you to be more than “just” an expert on credit risk, which companies will or won’t be able to afford. Your staff, management and clients all expect that credit risk to be managed using the latest and very best technology. Technology which keeps changing rapidly.
Your staff don’t want to be stuck fighting over access to shared spreadsheets, your finance department expects real-time data on when cash has come in, your client wants an instant answer on a credit limit, and your board can ask for a detailed exposure report at any time of the day.
To say IT projects are cumbersome is an understatement. Onboarding, project management, testing and training are not often the most popular jobs on the work floor. All of these activities are investments that require time and attention. An update of a credit system requires a bit more than pressing a button on your phone to update its software. And it requires you to work in very close partnership with your IT provider, who might speak a whole different language than you.
That is why, at SCHUMANN, we have dedicated more than 25 years of research and analysis to understanding every facet of credit management trade credit and surety insurance markets. Our team is home to some of the market’s leading trade credit experts, many of whom have spent years in the underwriting room and the board room. We understand not only the market’s trading conditions, but what it takes to maintain a thriving global trade credit portfolio – including kinds of insights you might need and the tech that will provide them.
When the tension between Ukraine and Russia began, for example, many firms found themselves clutching at paper trails to ger a handle on their local exposures. However, in today’s digital-first world, the extensive support credit risk management solutions can provide meant most of these tasks could have been done automatically.
Far from the days of collecting printed slips, best practice tech can help underwriters respond to early warnings of deteriorating creditworthiness, automatically process applications, and enable quick, flexible policy decisions to keep pace with rapidly changing appetites. Fundamentally, any software should be able to take away the burden of maintaining outdated, disparate manual tasks.
However, technological capability, and therefore the right technology to move a business forward, can vary greatly between companies. So, we proudly reject the ‘one size fits all’ approach and instead focus on configuration options. We prioritise configuration over code. Credit & Surety Software enables you to use and set the system to fit your business, risk appetite, underwriting guidelines, and targets. And if any of these changes, you can adjust it yourself. You don’t need to take on another project. Whether your business relies on tracking the creditworthiness of a shipping firm in Boston, or automatically assessing the risk of a manufacturer in Munich, SCHUMANN developers can build a solution.
We will work with your business to understand its commercial objectives and deliver the credit management, trade credit or surety risk platform that will help your business get there, in terms that make sense to you and your team.
In short, we know our aggregate from our accumulation risk; our binding authorities from our bordereaux; and our capital from our capacity – and that is just the beginning of the alphabet. With decades of London market underwriting expertise across the team, we are delighted to be able to speak the market’s language and help bridge the tricky divide between underwriting excellence and the complex software required to achieve it.
We see ourselves as a bespoke service provider and consultant to the sector. When all you want to do is get on with your job, SCHUMANN’s dedicated team of insurance and credit risk specialists are ready to do ours – no software jargon required.
Please reach out to us!
As Head of Sales Credit & Surety at SCHUMANN Lara Biermann is advising and supporting international credit risk insurer and surety bond provider in digitizing and automating their risk and business process management.
She studied business administration focused on finance, accounting and taxes and supervises international credit and surety insurance companies while implementing CAM Credit & Surety.
Head of Sales Credit & Surety, SCHUMANN
