Cultivating the competent underwriters of the future

SINOSURE is equipping a new generation of underwriters with the digital literacy, global outlook, and technical rigour needed to meet the evolving demands of trade credit insurance.

Underwriters are vital resources for credit insurers, who rely on their professionalism to meet the specialised demands of the credit insurance market. SINOSURE places strong emphasis on building the capacity of its trade credit underwriting team, providing extensive training and practical platforms to ensure that underwriters possess the advanced skills and professional expertise to effectively support our core business.

Deeply understanding the challenges underwriters face

Against the backdrop of a complex global environment and accelerating digital transformation, credit insurance underwriters are confronted with unprecedented challenges, primarily in the following areas:

International political and economic turbulence is intensifying the pressure of risk control: The global economic recovery remains sluggish, while intensifying regional geopolitical conflicts and rising trade protectionism are fuelling heightened uncertainty, instability, and elevated trade credit risks. Additionally, the surge in fraud risks across certain regions has led to big losses for credit insurers. These rising risks make it more difficult for underwriters to exercise risk prediction, identification, assessment, and control.

Evolving client needs call for enhanced underwriting services: With the increasing internationalisation of Chinese enterprises in global trade, demand for credit insurance is shifting from pure claim indemnification and recovery to full-scenario risk management solutions. This requires underwriters to acquire an in-depth understanding of industries, destination markets, and clients, and to adopt more innovative measures in product development, underwriting models, and services to continuously create practical value for clients.

The swift development of the digital economy is impacting traditional business practices: The rapid growth of digital technologies—including AI, big data, and cloud computing—has bolstered economic efficiency and deeply reshaped socioeconomic relations. Credit insurers are increasingly embracing the digital economy, leveraging technology in their business operations, and exercising institutional reforms to remain competitive. In this context, underwriters need to be able to proactively adapt to the new norm of ‘human-machine collaboration’ and shift from experience-based judgment to data-driven decision-making. We are working to enhance their digital capabilities in policy quantification, model construction, data mining, business innovation, and applying fintech to new frontiers in business development.

SINOSURE’s underwriter education and development practices

In response to the demands of the new era, we believe the education and development of underwriters should focus on three key dimensions: fundamental skills, digital capabilities, and an international perspective, all of which represent essential competencies of the modern underwriter.

Building solid skills at every stage

A house built on a foundation of sand will not last. Underwriters’ education must focus on the fundamental skills associated with policy-making, guideline implementation, risk assessment, and business analysis, empowering them to become experts in the realm of credit insurance. This means establishing a structured and differentiated training system. Our training programmes are tailored for underwriters at different career stages, combining offline workshops and online courses to deepen their understanding of policies and systems and improve their analytical skills.

It also means building training and communication platforms. SINOSURE has launched knowledge-sharing programs such as TCI (trade credit insurance) Forum, in which we invite senior underwriters or corporate experts to share professional opinions and insights with all of the company’s underwriters. We also established the TCI Salon, a platform encouraging headquarters underwriters to discuss topics associated with international affairs and macroeconomic issues on a voluntary basis.

Finally, it means promoting underwriting-based research, encouraging underwriters to conduct in-depth studies on macro trends, specific industries, and key countries, and translating research results into actionable insights for underwriting practices.

Proactively engaging with digitalisation

The digital transformation our industry is undergoing will be reflected in all aspects of underwriting, making digital literacy indispensable for underwriters. We actively guide underwriters to leverage digital technologies to solve business issues and create value.

We also involve underwriters in business architecture construction, forming dedicated task forces that work with IT teams on streamlining underwriting processes, optimising systems, and increasing productivity.

Underwriters are encouraged to work with risk modelling teams to develop and refine credit models, combining historical experience and quantitative parameters to facilitate precise credit decision-making. This approach has shifted credit approval from experience-based to data-driven.

We help underwriters develop data mining skills, cultivating a ‘digital mindset’ with systematic data analysis and strengthening their ability to collect, analyse, and apply data in credit assessment and approval.

Developing a well-rounded international perspective

With increasing global interactions and exchanges, underwriters are seizing opportunities to broaden their horizons and diversify their business development perspectives. We provide underwriters with short-term overseas assignment opportunities and foreign buyer visits to enhance their intercultural communication skills. We also focus on technical communications with other ECAs through the Berne Union and other multilateral or bilateral mechanisms, and encourage underwriters to expand their global networks, share professional insights, and learn from their counterparts.

We are also innovating on underwriters’ evaluation mechanisms, for instance by introducing OKR (Objectives and Key Results) methodologies, aligning strategic goals with actionable underwriting metrics to measure the outcomes of underwriters’ performance. We conduct internal reviews on a regular basis to check the quality of underwriting approvals, identify areas for improvement, and update our manual for underwriting practices, all with the aim of securing a high level of compliance.

With the accelerated evolution of the digital era, ‘human-machine interaction’ has moved into the mainstream of trade credit underwriting. The application of AI, in particular, unlocks enormous potential for optimising underwriting processes and efficiency, while posing fresh challenges in educating the next generation of underwriters. SINOSURE will keep track of industry trends and constantly explore ways to integrate new concepts and technologies into trade credit underwriting, building a digitally powered professional underwriting team with a broad international perspective.