Coface reported net income of 107.8 million euros for the first half of 2026, down 13.2% on the 124.2 million euros posted a year earlier, as the French trade credit insurer's core market continued to contract even as its combined ratio held steady.
Total revenue rose 0.8% at constant exchange rates and perimeter to 939.3 million euros, though credit insurance revenue itself was down 0.8% on the same basis, weighed down by negative pricing of 1.3% even as client activity and retention held up, with retention at a near-record 93.6%.
The combined ratio after reinsurance was flat year on year at 71.3%, with the net loss ratio improving 2.7 percentage points to 37.4%, offset by a 2.7-point rise in the cost ratio to 33.9% as the insurer continued investing under its Power the Core strategic plan. The annualised return on average tangible equity fell to 10.9% from a year earlier, and the estimated solvency ratio stood at approximately 194%, well above the group's target range of 155% to 175%.
"The first half of the year was marked by three strong trends: economic growth that remains weak and subject to repeated shocks, exponential growth in the use of data and technology linked to artificial intelligence, and business bankruptcies that remain at record levels," said Xavier Durand, Coface's chief executive.
Durand said companies were tightening cost control in ways that were weighing on growth in the insurer's core businesses, but that the first-half performance confirmed the relevance of its strategic plan, with Coface having met or exceeded its main financial targets more than halfway through its deployment.
Non-insurance activities, spanning factoring, business information and debt collection, grew 8.8% to 88.6 million euros, with business information revenue up 12% at constant exchange rates, or 19.1% including the Cedar Rose acquisition, continuing a run of double-digit growth in a global market Coface estimated at 17 billion euros.
Debt collection revenue jumped 31.6%, albeit from a modest base, while factoring rose 3.5%. Coface said it no longer expects business information to add 50 basis points to group return on tangible equity by 2027 as previously targeted, a shortfall it plans to offset instead through a higher dividend payout from 2028.
Geographically, growth was strongest in Northern Europe, up 2.6%, helped by factoring and business information gains and a rebound in Germany, while North America revenue fell 6.2% on a reported basis, hurt by softer client activity and currency effects.
Coface said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was reducing global growth by an estimated 0.5 percentage point, with a sharper impact in Europe, a key market for the insurer. The company also said the broader credit insurance market remains in decline, with premium growth significantly below expectations and corporate bankruptcies at record levels across most developed economies, even as Coface said its own performance continues to outpace that shrinking market on both premium growth and loss ratio.
For credit insurance and specialty market observers, Coface's results underline a pattern also visible elsewhere in the sector: insurers with meaningful diversification into adjacent data and information services are outperforming those reliant solely on shrinking core underwriting lines, a dynamic likely to keep shaping how trade credit insurers allocate capital as bankruptcies and geopolitical disruption continue to weigh on global trade volumes.
Separately, Coface's board co-opted Hugh Sturgess, chief executive of Arch Insurance International, and Christine Todd, chief investment officer at Arch Capital Group, as non-independent directors, replacing David Gansberg and Marcy Rathman.
The appointments reflect Arch Capital's roughly 45% stake in Coface, built up in stages since 2020, rather than any change in its shareholding, and leave Coface's ten-member board with an unchanged majority of independent directors.
