The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is set to expand a war-risk reinsurance facility built with Aon for Ukraine, after it was “fully utilised” within around nine months, the bank has told GTR.
The Ukraine Recovery and Reconstruction Guarantee Facility (URGF) was launched to support reinsurance capacity for war-related risks underwritten by Ukrainian insurers, covering inland cargo, motor own damage and railway rolling stock.
The mutilateral development bank said €360mn of goods and vehicle movements were insured cumulatively in the nine months since the facility became operational in March 2025, and that it is looking to expand its size with “the support of our international partners, notably the EU”.
The EBRD and Aon originally partnered with Ukrainian insurers Ingo, Colonnade and Uniqa to offer policies backed by the facility, while MS Amlin acted as its first international reinsurer.
The initial €110mn guarantee scheme has since been able to support a larger volume of cover than its original size because capacity is freed up and reused as each short-term policy expires, the EBRD said.
But the bank pointed to the “shortage of capacity in the existing business lines” within URGF and said it is working to widen the range of assets eligible for cover, beginning with “logistics-adjacent activities”.
“Market feedback is that supply of insurance against war-related risks remains constrained – local insurers still report limited capacity to offload such risks to reinsurers, which weigh on their balance sheet,” an EBRD spokesperson said. “This is reflected in the strong uptake of the EBRD-Aon facility.”
Demand to extend the scheme to energy-related assets is also “very strong”, the lender said, though any expansion into that segment is likely to take place only in the medium to long term, given “insuring these assets would require a larger scale and more data to calibrate underwriting sustainably”.
Aon declined to comment when approached by GTR.
The URGF facility forms part of a wider EBRD push to support private-sector activity in Ukraine. The bank deployed €550mn under its Trade Facilitation Programme in the country in 2025, and is developing a separate price stabilisation mechanism with the World Bank aimed at unlocking private investment in renewable energy.
That mechanism is “expected to support 1GW of new renewable capacity and potentially mobilise €1.5bn in investment”, according to the EBRD.
The private sector accounted for 57% of the bank’s Ukraine investment volume in 2025. Over 90% of the individual projects it backed went to private enterprises.
“Private activity is real and growing. But mobilisation still depends heavily on [multilateral development bank] risk capacity, donor guarantees and blended finance,” the EBRD’s spokesperson said.
