CM April 2020

Gerling NCM) is a major advantage: “It gives us
added leverage,” she says. “If a buyer fails to pay,
then it impacts their credit score and their ability
to get credit insurance.”
ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
The downturn in 2008 was a tough time for
Atradius across all of its businesses, and Yvette is
understandably circumspect in her response to
my questioning: “There were well-documented
challenges across all of the industry,” she says,
“and it’s fair to say we have learned the lessons
from those times. It has meant that in more recent
economic difficulties, we have been much better
connected with customers and brokers in how we
manage difficult cases and are more agile in our
approach.
“Conversations are much more transparent
and open, and the quality of data has particularly
improved. The data available today is much more
current and up-to-date and provides a better
picture of a company’s true financial position.
This is helping customers make even betterinformed
decisions.”
Yvette was engaged early in the process
of establishing Atradius Collections and
setting up the customer services teams.
She also took on a global sales manager’s
role, expanding the company’s portfolio
into both globally insured and noninsured
businesses. She also had a spell in
Programme Management, looking at ways
of best servicing their clients on a global
basis:
“Although based in Cardiff, it involved
plenty of travelling to meet customers
and colleagues and working out ways of
ensuring our customers had a consistent
service, regardless of what sector or
market they were involved in. It also meant
understanding and addressing different
expectation levels, and how these varied
across disparate cultures.”
Whereas the appetite for using an outsourced
collections service is a concept that is well
understood in Europe, in other markets it was
more challenging: “Credit managers in the UK
and Europe are far more likely to be comfortable
working with an external third-party, but in Asia,
for example, the practice is not so well established.”
(Atradius Collections publishes an International
Debt Collection handbook each year, a
comprehensive document which sets out the
different approaches required to collecting debts
“I knew I wanted to work and to get out into the big
world beyond the small town in which I was born, I
wanted to escape to the city”
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / April 2020 / PAGE 28