Berne Union releases 2025 Yearbook
Berne Union releases 2025 Yearbook: Export credit finds balance through collaboration as the industry grows and innovates in the face of mounting strategic tensions in trade and investment
The Berne Union has released its 2025 Yearbook, offering a detailed account of how public and private export credit and investment insurance providers responded to the year’s competing global dynamics: geopolitical realignment, rapidly changing trade policies, the security and transition components of a rising energy imperative, and accelerating digitalisation.
The Yearbook explores how these tensions are being reconciled through institutional adaptation, cross-sector collaboration, and innovation in underwriting and risk management. Featuring contributions from seasoned practitioners and subject matter experts, it delivers data-driven analysis and insight from across the global export credit and investment insurance ecosystem.
Revealing structure and cohesion beneath contrasts
In a year marked by exceptional fragmentation and volatility, the industry maintained resilience and reach. While volumes grew and recoveries held strong, many Berne Union members were also reformulating priorities, taking up expanded mandates, and testing new approaches.
This dynamic backdrop shapes the 2025 Yearbook, which opens with an introductory article from BU President Yuichiro Akita framing the Union’s work as a stabilising force in global trade, and urging boldness in the face of mounting uncertainty. He describes the current moment as one of increasing responsibility: ‘The current global context – encompassing geostrategic competition, economic fragmentation, rearmament, and climate change – is not an easy one. But we must be bold and look forward. Our collective response as an industry must be to find the best ways to promote stability, economic security, and growth.’
A strong line-up of perspectives includes a headline macro-level analysis from M. Ayhan Kose, Deputy Chief Economist of the World Bank Group; an essay by Andreas Klasen and Henning Meyer calling for strategic renewal in the era of multipolarisation; and a sharp analysis of sovereign debt and regulatory risks. The Yearbook’s core chapters then move into the operational realities, including Pangea Risk’s assessment of corridor risk and how political realignments are reshaping underwriting assumptions, Jørn Fredsgaard Sørensen’s deep dive on the return of industrial policy, Paola Ramírez Salazar’s analysis of how shifting tariff regimes are driving new risk management strategies, and Jon Holvoet’s account of how AI is reshaping underwriting, drawing on Credendo’s experience.
These and the Yearbook’s many other expert contributions surface both strategic fault lines and emerging tools, offering a clear-sighted picture of an industry evolving to meet a more complex world.
The Berne Union acknowledges the generous support of its Yearbook advertisers, whose contributions help make this publication possible: AXA XL, Vantage Risk, Dhaman, Sovereign, IA Group, Tinubu, Recovery Advisers, Pangea-Risk, ICIEC
Access the Yearbook
The full 2025 Berne Union Yearbook, including data, and member listings, is available for download here
