Your client is shouting, the market is on fire, and you’ve lost sight of what really matters.

A foreign company that had been operating successfully for 24 years recently collapsed.

One of its Greek suppliers, insured under a trade credit insurance policy, called me immediately after the insolvency was confirmed. By that point, every commercial and amicable solution had already been exhausted. The discussion was no longer about prevention—it was about recovering a significant financial loss.

We immediately initiated the claims and damage control process with the insurer.

As happens in every serious insolvency case, the insurer promptly withdrew the credit limits for all insured suppliers trading with the same buyer.

And that’s when the interesting part began.

I learned that two other brokers contacted the insurance company to ask why their clients’ credit limits had been cancelled.

Once they were informed that another supplier had already filed a claim, instead of asking for additional information to better assess the situation and protect their clients, they started pressuring the insurer to reinstate the credit limits.

Why?

“Our client is complaining,” they replied.

If your first reaction after a confirmed claim is to ask the insurer to reopen the credit limit, you are not acting as a risk advisor.

You are acting as a complaints call center.

A Trade Credit Insurance Broker is not a messenger whose job is simply to pass clients’ requests to the insurance company.

Our role is to understand the risk before our clients do.

To ask the difficult questions.

To interpret the available information.

To challenge assumptions when necessary.

And, above all, to help clients make better-informed decisions.

Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why the titles Broker, Insurance Broker, and Risk Advisor still struggle to receive the recognition they deserve.

Many people call themselves brokers.

Far fewer actually think and act like professional risk managers.

In trade credit insurance, our responsibility is not to tell clients what they want to hear.

It is to protect them.

Sometimes, that even means protecting them from their own decisions.