Caravel prices emerging market trade credit that the global insurance market declined to investigate. We spent a decade operating the trade we now underwrite.
The premise
A buyer in Abidjan or Bamako needs cover on an open account shipment. Investigating that buyer from London costs more than the premium the risk can carry. So the file is never opened, the limit is never written, and the market records the risk as bad rather than unexamined. Capital was never the constraint. Information was.
Every serious attempt to move goods into these markets fails at the same wall. Not price. Not demand. Underwriting.
The reason we built Caravel.
The difference
Traditional carriers price this risk from the outside, on thin files, at arm's length. We price it from inside the trade, on counterparties we have transacted with ourselves.
Why we can do this
We financed these buyers on our own balance sheet and took real losses doing it. That experience is why our screen looks the way it does, and why we decline the obligors we decline. We are not learning this market on somebody else's capital.
Africa's multilateral trade bank and the UN's economic commission for the region appointed us to build and operate their trade exchange, and have paid us to run it ever since. It has closed transactions without a default. That platform is where our counterparty record comes from.
Global agricultural traders come to us asking for cover on markets their existing insurers will not touch. Our origination costs close to nothing, because the counterparties already transact with us. Our pipeline is trading desks, not retail brokers.
Y Combinator backed, named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and twelve years inside the hardest trade corridors in the world. Underwriting is not a pivot. It is the thing the last decade was preparation for.
The book
Single-buyer, non-payment trade credit on emerging market importers, originated exclusively through our own network.
Single-situation, single-buyer trade credit against commercial non-payment, with political risk available where the corridor calls for it.
The working capital cycle of real trade. Goods ship on terms, the obligor pays on terms, and the seller is covered in between.
We start where our data is deepest and our record is longest, and extend into wider Sub-Saharan and emerging market corridors as we go.
We write buyers we can evidence. No verified payment record means a referral, not a rate. That discipline is the whole product.
Working with us
We are seeking delegated authority to write this book, under a coverholder binder or an initial facultative line. Our underwriting basis, portfolio detail and full submission are available under NDA.
For carriers, reinsurers and Lloyd's syndicates.
Request the submissionIf you are selling into these markets on open account and your current insurer will not follow you there, tell us the corridor and the obligor. We will tell you whether we can look at it.
For commodity traders, exporters and their brokers.
Bring us a riskQuestions
Because the economics only work if you already have the information. For the ticket sizes that matter here, the cost of investigating a buyer exceeds the premium the risk can carry, so a London or Dubai desk cannot justify opening the file. We are not cleverer than that market. We simply are not paying for the investigation, because we did it over the last decade as an operator.
We do not price the flag. We price the buyer. The whole premise is that within a market the market treats as a single bad risk, there are counterparties with a decade of clean payment behaviour, and we can tell you which ones they are. Anyone underwriting these corridors at the country level is guessing.
From operating the trade. Transactions we ran, buyers we financed, obligors that have moved goods and money through infrastructure we built and continue to run for the region's multilateral bank. It is a byproduct of a decade of operating, which is why it cannot be bought and has not been replicated.
Not yet in our own right. We are establishing our permissions and will write through an authorised principal in the interim. We would rather say that plainly than be vague about it.
Submission materials, portfolio detail and our underwriting basis are available under NDA.