Where the money is: receivables insurance

At age 49, Mark Attley sold his company Millennium CreditRisk Management, a brokerage with $10 million in annual premium turnover. But it could have been so much more, so much sooner, he says.

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At age 49, Mark Attley sold his company Millennium CreditRisk Management, a brokerage with $10 million in annual premium turnover. But it could have been so much more, so much sooner, he says.

“If I had to do it all over again, I’d aim my arrow straight at receivables insurance,” says Attley. “It’s a great product with a great future that many more brokers should take advantage of.”

As an entry level property and casualty underwriter in the early ‘80s, Mark Attley had no knowledge of a lucrative class of insurance or that he was on a trajectory that would place him as the president of the newly created Receivables Insurance Association of Canada.

“Receivables insurance is not just another insurance product in which a client sees value only after making a claim because receivables insurance doesn’t just sit in a drawer until something happens,” says Attley. “It’s a real business tool, an essential aspect of corporate risk management and also growth management.”
 
He was 49 when he sold his company, and remained with the acquiring firm for two-and-a-half years, entering semi-retirement and now financially secure at age 52. Attley’s success story and how he has found that success through receivables insurance is featured in the next issue of Insurance Business magazine.
 
Receivables insurance offers a set of financial planning tools used by Canadian businesses to protect corporate balance sheets against unforeseen trade disruptions or political turmoil while fostering faster company growth. Attley believes that account receivables is still the biggest unidentified and uninsured exposure facing Canadian businesses today. (continued.)
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“Receivables insurance market penetration rates are up to 30 per cent in European countries with long trading traditions, and 15 per cent in the U.S.,” he said.
 
According to Attley, he has shown hundreds of Canadian business people and bankers the benefits of receivables insurance over other forms of accounts receivables risk mitigation, but the market is still in its early days. Less than 1 per cent of Canadian companies currently utilize receivables insurance as part of their financial planning – or less than 10,000 of Canada’s 1.1 million employer businesses.
 

 

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