Partnerships that de-risk development: The legal architecture of cooperation

Behind every reinsurance treaty, co-insurance arrangement, and blended finance structure lies careful legal engineering. ICIEC’s Legal Department reflects on cooperation that is designed to endure.

When ICIEC concluded the IsDB Group Annual Meetings 2026 in Baku with the signing of seven agreements, memoranda of understanding, and insurance policies valued at more than USD 1 billion, the ceremony lasted a matter of minutes.^[1] The signatures, however, were the visible endpoint of months of legal work: negotiating risk-sharing formulae, reconciling policy wordings drawn from different legal traditions, and ensuring that every instrument was both Shariah-compliant and immediately familiar to conventional counterparties. Cooperation is the strategic heart of ICIEC’s mandate; legal certainty is what makes that cooperation bankable.

As the only Shariah-based multilateral credit and political risk insurer in the world, and a long-standing member of the Berne Union, ICIEC occupies a distinctive position in the global risk-mitigation ecosystem. Over three decades it has forged an extensive network of partnerships with national export credit agencies (ECAs), reinsurers, banks, and multilateral institutions, and cumulatively insured approximately USD 139 billion in trade and investment across its 51 member states.^[2] Each of those relationships rests on a documented legal foundation, and it is the task of the Legal Department to ensure those foundations can bear the weight placed upon them.

Bridging two systems: Cooperation with ECAs

Cooperation with national ECAs illustrates the challenge particularly well. Over the years, ICIEC has entered into framework reinsurance arrangements with a number of leading European ECAs, including Euler Hermes, SACE, CESCE, OeKB, KUKE, EIFO, and Atradius. Most recently, in May 2026, ICIEC signed a framework reinsurance agreement with Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB), acting as agent of the Republic of Austria, under which ICIEC provides facultative reinsurance on a case-by-case basis for OeKB-supported insurance facilities. These arrangements demonstrate the ability to reconcile the requirements of ECAs operating under diverse national export credit and guarantee regimes with those of a multilateral insurer operating on Takaful principles of mutual solidarity.

The legal questions are anything but academic. When does the reinsurer ‘follow the fortunes’ of the cedant, and when may it assert its own defences? How are claims-payment triggers, waiting periods, and loss definitions aligned so that the insured experiences a single, coherent product? How are recoveries shared, and in what order? A framework agreement answers these questions once, in advance, so individual cessions can then be bound quickly as transactions arise. That is the quiet value of framework documentation: it converts goodwill between institutions into speed and predictability for exporters and banks.

The same discipline underpins ICIEC’s memoranda of understanding with partners such as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. A well-drafted MoU is candid about what is binding (confidentiality, information exchange, compliance undertakings) and what is aspirational (pipeline development), so that neither party is surprised when cooperation matures into transaction documents.

Multilaterals: Shared mandates, shared documentation

Cooperation among multilaterals raises a different set of questions, because each institution brings its own charter, privileges, immunities, and preferred creditor considerations to the table. ICIEC’s co- and reinsurance arrangements with MIGA, its role alongside the African Development Bank, ATIDI, AUDA-NEPAD, and GuarantCo in the Africa Co-Guarantee Platform,^[3] and its insurance pillar within the Arab-Africa Trade Bridges Programme all require careful inter-institutional drafting: pari passu treatment of recoveries, clear subrogation waterfalls, and dispute-resolution clauses — typically arbitration — suited to parties that enjoy immunity from national courts.

The frontier is now blended finance. In April 2026, the United Nations Development Programme signed a joint statement of intent^[4] with ICIEC and ICD introducing a blended finance structure that leverages credit insurance to catalyse private investment in climate-smart sectors. Embedding insurance within a blended structure means the policy must interlock with concessional tranches, guarantees, and commercial debt. Definitions of default, assignment of policy proceeds to security trustees, and intercreditor arrangements must all be drafted so that the insurance responds exactly where the structure assumes it will. Legal ambiguity at any of these joints is precisely what deters the private capital the structure exists to mobilise.

The private market: Wordings that lenders can bank

ICIEC’s partnership with the private insurance and banking market is equally documentation-intensive. A notable example is ICIEC’s USD 626 million Non-Honouring of Sovereign Financial Obligations (NHSFO) insurance policy supporting Phase II of the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway in Nigeria. The policy, structured in favour of First Abu Dhabi Bank as policyholder, was signed on the sidelines of the IsDB Group Annual Meetings 2026 in Baku, helping mobilise long-term financing for one of Nigeria’s most significant transport infrastructure projects.^[5] An NHSFO policy is only as strong as the enforceability of the underlying sovereign obligation, which is why the legal review extends beyond the policy itself to the sovereign’s authorisations and the treatment of immunity in the financing documents.

Comparable rigour supports ICIEC’s reinsurance partnerships with private insurers and ECAs acting in the private market — from the USD 360 million Shariah-compliant facility arranged with Atradius Dutch State Business for Riyadh’s urban transit programme to long-standing treaty relationships with leading global reinsurers. These arrangements, sustained by disciplined wording reviews and renewals, underpin the capital efficiency reflected in ICIEC’s Aa3 rating from Moody’s, maintained for eighteen consecutive years, and its AA- rating from S&P Global.

A further magnet drawing these market players together is ICIEC’s Preferred Creditor Status (PCS). As a multilateral institution within the IsDB Group, ICIEC benefits from the priority that member states have historically accorded to multilateral creditors and insurers in times of fiscal or transfer stress, including exclusion from general debt moratoria and preferential access to foreign exchange. When national ECAs cede risk to ICIEC, when private reinsurers participate behind its policies, or when banks lend on the strength of its cover, each of them shelters under that umbrella, gaining access to member-state risk on terms the market could not replicate alone. PCS is therefore more than a credit attribute: it is the institutional bridge on which ECAs, multilaterals, and private insurers converge around a single transaction. Preserving its integrity — in policy wordings, subrogation clauses, and recovery arrangements — is among the Legal Department’s most important continuing duties.

Shariah compliance as a common language

Running through all of this is a distinctive contribution of ICIEC’s legal function: ensuring that every instrument is consistent with Takaful principles while remaining recognisable to conventional counterparties. The comprehensive Islamic finance insurance framework recently concluded with the Arab Trade Financing Program, and products such as the Green and Sustainability Sukuk Insurance Policy, demonstrate that Shariah compliance is not a constraint on cooperation but a bridge to an Islamic finance industry now exceeding USD 4 trillion in assets — a vast and still under-utilised pool of capital for development.

Legal certainty is capital

Risk mitigation is, in the end, a promise: that if a defined event occurs, payment will follow. Partners cede risk to ICIEC, lenders advance funds against its policies, and investors commit capital to member states because that promise is written down, precisely, in instruments that will hold. As ICIEC deepens its cooperation with ECAs, multilaterals, and the private market in support of regional integration and sustainable prosperity, the Legal Department’s contribution is easy to overlook and impossible to do without: it turns partnership into obligation, and obligation into confidence.

1. https://iciec.isdb.org/news-and-events/iciec-isdb-annual-meetings-baku-2026/ ↑
2. https://iciec.isdb.org/news-and-events/iciec-2025-annual-report/ ↑
3. https://iciec.isdb.org/news-and-events/africa-co-guarantee-platform/ ↑
4. https://iciec.isdb.org/news-and-events/arab-states-green-finance-sme-partnership/ ↑
5. https://iciec.isdb.org/news-and-events/iciec-backs-lagos-calabar-coastal-highway-financing/ ↑