Membership

New Zealand Export Credit Office

New Zealand Export Credit Office (NZECO) is New Zealand’s export credit agency. Our job is to support New Zealand’s export growth by helping Kiwi companies overcome barriers to trade and exploit international business opportunities. We work in partnership with banks and financiers to complement their services. Part of the team travels around New Zealand to educate exporters, bankers and export-promotion agencies about our services. We look to country specific business councils (like the Latin American Business Council) to help spread the world about our role in supporting export growth.

As a non-funding operation, NZECO issues financial guarantees and insurances aimed at enabling exporters to manage their overseas buyer payment risk, gain access to additional funding from their bank and increase their competitive advantage. Being an export credit agency means that NZECO has a higher appetite for commercial and political risk than banks and trade credit insurers. Export credit agencies are required to cover their costs over time so we charge a premium for our services in order to fulfil this obligation.

If you’re an established exporter and you have identified Latin America as a target market, NZECO may be able to help you find a solution to overcome common barriers to trade, such as:

• using trade credit insurance to manage payment risk and / or smooth your cashflow for contracts up to 1 year
• enabling you to increase your competitive advantage by offering extended repayment terms to your overseas buyers (a common requirement in Latin America), and
• partnering with your bank to provide performance bond guarantees which will free up their existing facilities.

NZECO has established a relationship with Canadian financier, Northstar, aimed at providing an additional channel to access to finance (aimed at enabling exporters to secure sales). Northstar specialise in providing finance to smaller scale contracts over one year (between half a million and ten million dollars). Northstar have particular interest in working with Latin American companies.

To know more about what NZECO can do to help your export business, contact us on (04) 917 6060 or eco@treasury.govt.nz. Visit our website to read more about our solutions.

You can also read NZECO’s case studies to get a deeper understanding of how we’ve supported exporters across all sectors and regions in New Zealand.