Market trends: Energy, security, and pressure on claims ratios
Expansion across the energy mix, strategic deployment, and an evolving risk environment characterise the year’s activity.
Preliminary data for 2025 points to another year of significant evolution across the export credit and investment insurance market. The three trends highlighted below reflect both the broadening mandate of Berne Union members and the macro forces – geopolitical, energetic, and economic – that have driven member activity throughout the year.[1]
Energy in every direction
Energy was one of the defining sectors for medium- and long-term (MLT) export credit in 2025, with members active across a wide spectrum of projects driven by a policy environment that increasingly treats the green transition and energy security as twin imperatives. Combined new commitments in renewables and energy reached USD 28.8 billion, up 29% from USD 22.3 billion in 2024, with the year characterised by big-ticket project financings across a broad range of energy technologies.
On the renewables side, business was concentrated in large-scale offshore wind project financings. This included the USD 4.8 billion East Anglia THREE Offshore Wind Farm backed in part by EIFO, the USD 7 billion Bałtyk II and III Offshore Wind Farms in Poland supported by Euler Hermes and KUKE, and the USD 3.3 billion Greater Changhua project in Taiwan, supported by a syndicate of Export Credit Agencies (ECAs). Members also supported a significant volume of power transmission infrastructure, reflecting the grid investment needed to make new generation capacity viable.
Alongside renewables, new commitments in the broader energy sector reached USD 11.4 billion, up 18% on 2024 and representing a 29% CAGR since 2022. This trajectory reflects the energy security reassessment across Europe that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which prompted governments to take a more pragmatic view of the transition pathway, adopting a wider energy mix than pre-2022 consensus.
Nuclear featured prominently for the first time at scale, with BpiFrance committing a USD 6.7 billion debt facility to the Sizewell C plant in the UK. Combined cycle gas turbine projects also became more prevalent, with transactions including Euler Hermes’ support for the Jizzakh plant in Uzbekistan, SERV's USD 280 million facility for the Kozienice plant in Poland, and SACE’s USD 1.5 billion commitment to the Tisza plant in Hungary reflecting the growing acceptance of high-efficiency gas as a practical near-term complement to the longer transition.
The 2025 energy picture reflects an export credit community increasingly asked to support a wider energy mix as governments balance long-term climate commitments against near-term supply and affordability concerns.
Strategic priorities drive ECA activity
Geopolitical fragmentation has reshaped export credit as much as any influence in recent years. Nations are spending more to defend themselves and to secure the raw materials their economies depend on, and ECAs have become central to both efforts.
Defence-related export credit volumes have remained elevated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, averaging USD 19.9 billion annually since the 2023 rearmament surge, with approximately USD 17.3 billion issued in 2025. Demand has been concentrated in Eastern Europe, where rearmament continues at pace. Poland led as the largest recipient, taking deliveries of South Korean tanks and artillery. Ukraine received a USD 3.5 billion UK Export Finance facility which covered USD 1.6 billion of lightweight multirole missile exports. Serbia deepened its defence ties with France through BpiFrance, backing its Rafale fighter jet acquisition, while Czechia took air defence deliveries supported by Swedish ECA financing. Beyond Europe, Indonesia has also emerged as a significant importer, procuring French submarines, an Italian aircraft carrier, and a UK maritime surveillance system, all facilitated by ECA support.
ECAs are simultaneously being deployed to secure critical mineral supply chains, a challenge with similar geopolitical bases. China dominates global production and processing of these materials, while sanctions on Russia have tightened supply of key materials, with direct consequences for battery manufacturing, renewable energy infrastructure, and defence production. In response, Western governments have turned to their ECAs as proactive instruments to address these supply chain vulnerabilities.
In the US, EXIM approved a USD 1.3 billion commitment for the Reko Diq copper and gold project in Pakistan, and in early 2026 launched Project Vault, a USD 10 billion direct loan to establish a US Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve. In Europe, the Lionheart lithium project in Germany, classed as a strategic project under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, drew USD 1.4 billion in financing from EDC, Export Finance Australia, EIFO, and more. UK Export Finance, meanwhile, introduced the Critical Goods Export Development Guarantee to help UK suppliers secure finance for long-term imports and domestic investment.
Across both defence and critical minerals, ECAs are now operating closer to the frontier of national security policy.
Rising losses, plateauing limits
Short-term export credit insurance claims have weathered the post-pandemic macro environment with relative resilience, but full-year 2025 data may be putting that narrative under pressure. Nominal claims reached EUR 2.1 billion,[2] exceeding the COVID year for the first time and nearly double the 2021 trough, while the claims ratio rose to 0.141%,[3] its highest since 2020.
The ratio’s stability through 2021 to 2024 was largely a function of credit limit expansion. Aggregate limits grew 44% over that period, and rising absolute claims were to a meaningful degree a natural corollary of a larger portfolio. That dynamic shifted in 2025 as limits grew less than 0.2% while absolute claims rose 17%. With the denominator stalling and claims continuing their upward trajectory, the claims ratio has revealed a more precarious underlying picture.
The insolvency backdrop reinforces the concern. Corporate failures rose sharply across Europe and the US from 2022 as pandemic support was withdrawn yet claims rose only gradually. Short-term providers in the Berne Union Business Confidence Index have consistently flagged rising claims expectations, though deterioration has consistently undershot their sentiment to date. The 2026 outlook is less reassuring, with members citing rising global insolvencies, tariff-driven disruption to trade flows and obligor creditworthiness, and continued portfolio expansion as converging headwinds.
With limits plateauing, the cushion that suppressed the ratio through the expansionary years seems to be no longer available. If claims maintain their current trajectory, and the lagged effect of post-pandemic insolvency normalisation suggests they may, the ratio will follow.
This article uses our members most recent data submissions, which are still undergoing validation and may be revised.
- All transactions discussed in this article are public information ↑
- EUR currency used to remove distortion of volatile USD in 2025 and reflect reporting currency of the largest providers ↑
- Excluded data from large private insurer that has not provided claims data ↑
