Founding CEO of the African continent's only Multilateral Export Credit Agency, African Trade Insurance Agency, forms new London Agency, Cross Border Risk Agency Limited

The Cross Border Risk Agency Limited will assist companies structure all types of political risk exposure involving personnel, assets or receivables

Bernard de Haldevang, the outgoing and founding CEO of the African Trade Insurance Agency ("ATI"), the African continent's only multilateral export credit and investment insurance agency, announced today the formation of a new company Cross Border Risk Agency Limited ("CBRA") in the United Kingdom, to which he returns after almost four years at the helm of ATI as its resident head of mission in Nairobi. De Haldevang, a seasoned political risk specialist with 22 years' experience in this niche of the insurance industry, leaves ATI and Africa in search of new challenges. "It is with some sadness that I leave the Agency, but also in the knowledge that it is well set to continue its growth and prominence in assisting the financing of new projects for Africa".

De Haldevang, who has supported the World Bank's Export Credit activities in his capacity as a political risk underwriter since 1998 as an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, believes he will continue to be able to support ATI's activities in his new company. Under an MoU signed with ATI, the two parties intend that he open an Underwriting Representation Office in London for ATI, to continue to promote ATI and Africa.

He remained tight lipped, however, about other plans he has for his new company, revealing only that he intends to remain in the underwriting area of the broader political risk arena, with plans to continue to "provide innovative risk solutions for corporate exposures to political risks affecting assets, receivables and personnel" and that he is "in the early stages of negotiations with major backers on some new projects with a more global reach than just the African continent".

Asked whether Cross Border Risk Agency will focus purely on this new project, the veteran Lloyd's man said that he intended "CBRA to be a multi-faceted business involved in consulting and underwriting for many principals provided always that there is no conflict in its activities". He added that his "involvement with the Berne Union [the International Union of Credit and Investment Insurers] and the Prague Club while CEO of ATI, with major corporate insurers while in the private market and with emerging market governments has opened my eyes to some exciting potential products and services in the industry" but that he needed some time for development of these ideas with potential backers.

He concluded by lamenting the high level of corruption that pervades African life and business having seen at first hand the damage thus sustained by African economies and its peoples. He noted that both emerging markets and developed nations needed to do a lot more to combat this and that he intended to spend some of his time in working with anti corruption NGOs to explore how the insurance market could be better used to defeat this cancer. He said "I hope to be able to lead this fight from within the market"

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