A London popcorn maker has just landed its biggest order in 15 years of trading, and the thing that made it possible wasn't a bigger factory or a canny sales pitch. It was an insurance policy.
Joe & Seph's, the family-run gourmet popcorn brand founded by Joseph Sopher in 2010, has agreed a £100,000 supply deal with Panda, the Savola Group-owned chain that is the largest grocery retailer in Saudi Arabia. It's the company's largest single export order to date.
But according to UK Export Finance (UKEF), the government's export credit agency, the deal almost didn't happen, not because of product or logistics concerns, but because a contract of that size, with a single new buyer in an unfamiliar market, was more risk than a business of Joe & Seph's size could reasonably absorb on its own.
That's a familiar bind for smaller exporters: win the order, then discover the payment risk on a single overseas buyer is bigger than your balance sheet can stomach. Joe & Seph's, which employs more than 60 people at its London HQ and has picked up over 100 Great Taste Awards for its oven-baked, West Country butter-caramel popcorn, turned to UKEF's Export Insurance Policy (EXIP) which offers cover designed specifically for exporters who can't get credit insurance from the private market, often because they're selling to a single buyer, a smaller-value contract, or a higher-risk territory.
The policy covered 80% of the £100,000 contract against the risk of Panda not paying up which equates to an insured value of around £80,000. It was apparently enough to tip the decision from "too risky" to "let's do it."
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Hitesh Patel, UKEF's export finance manager on the account, called it "a great example of how UKEF can help SMEs scale up." Paul Sopher, director at Joe & Seph's, said it gave them "the confidence to accept our largest order ever," on a deal he says they'd otherwise have had to turn down.
That's the core pitch for trade credit insurance generally, and there's a reason it's worth brokers paying attention to deals like this one rather than filing them under "small SME story." To even qualify for EXIP, an exporter has to show they couldn't get cover from the commercial market first and for export values over £250,000, UKEF asks for evidence of that.
In practice that means brokers sit right in the middle of this process: UKEF pays a 15% commission, capped at £25,000 per policy, to approved brokers who bring exporters to it, funded out of the exporter's premium at no extra cost to them. For brokers with SME clients eyeing export markets the private market won't touch, that's a live revenue line, not just a referral favour.
Joe & Seph's now exports to 32 countries, and UKEF says it's eyeing further growth in the US, the wider Middle East and Singapore. The Saudi deal fits a pattern UKEF has been keen to publicise: the agency says it provided more than £11 billion in loans, guarantees and insurance over the last financial year, reaching 37 countries and supporting an estimated 85,000 jobs and up to £6.4 billion in UK GDP.
Of the 937 UK businesses it backed directly that year, 66% were SMEs which is, in effect, UKEF's whole reason for existing: stepping in where private insurers won't touch a deal, so that a viable export order doesn't fall over purely for want of cover.
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None of this means the private trade credit market is being squeezed out as UKEF's eligibility rules exist precisely to keep it complementary rather than competitive, sitting alongside brokers and commercial credit insurers rather than replacing them.
But it's a useful reminder for anyone advising SME clients on export plans: a "no" from a mainstream credit insurer isn't necessarily the end of the road, and it might be the start of a commission-earning conversation instead.
