Trade credit insurer Equinox Global has launched two new solutions which offer businesses top ups on their existing policies.

The products offer identical cover to the primary policy and are designed to capitalise on the credit limit reductions of mono-line insurers like Coface, Euler Hermes and Atradius.

Alban de Malherbe, who heads up Equinox’s operations in France and who helped to develop the products, says they are targeted at “companies which are looking for more capacity – we are offering to add new capacity on limits that have been imposed”.

Equinox is keen to exploit the gap in the market which emerged after the state insurance top up schemes established in the likes of Britain and France during the depths of the credit crisis, expired.

One of the solutions insures proportional additional credit limit amounts based on the credit risk rating assessments made by an internal credit management team or another credit insurer, while the other insures non proportional additional individual credit limit amounts, based on credit risk assessments made by Equinox.

De Malherbe tells GTR that Equinox is also exploring co-insurance models. “Co-insurance does exist, but it’s not common in this sector. Maybe it’s time for the trade finance insurance market to start to explore co-insurance solutions. We are doing some top up insurance as co-insurance on behalf of the primary insurers, working with many of the main firms.”