Staying on top of things with innovative solutions
In times of current economic difficulties and the massive increase in regulation for monitoring suppliers and business partners, companies continue to face particular challenges. The requirements are becoming more comprehensive, the liability risks for management more significant. Jörg Kowalewski, head of Ecclesia Credit, the group-internal specialist for financing and hedging of commercial credit for the Ecclesia Group's brokerage customers, reports here on Ecclesia Trade Credit Manager (ETCM) and the Ecclesia Credit Rating Cover platform. These are two innovative solutions from the Ecclesia Group from which deas customers also benefit.
As a holistic consultant and broker, Ecclesia Credit responded to these developments early on and established solutions in the market that both enable the management of supplier credits and ensure compliance with the requirements of the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG).
To avoid economic damage from granting supplier credits, companies must constantly keep an eye on internal and external information and adjust their risk assessments daily. However, permanent monitoring can lead to considerable costs if used across the board. This is where Ecclesia Trade Credit Manager (ETCM) comes in. This cloud-based software enables clients to analyze the payment behavior of individual customers within their group, to evaluate external information structurally, to identify cluster risks and to take appropriate measures.
What exactly does ETCM do?
“The ETCM offers our clients a significant reduction in the manual effort involved in monitoring credit limits for their own customers by linking the company-specific ERP system with creditworthiness and payment information of debtors and automating the workflow for limit checks. Due dates of invoices and deadlines of credit insurance are monitored daily, workflows are generated and assigned to the responsible employees via the system – simply targeted and secure. If anything stands out, the responsible credit manager is informed immediately,” says Jörg Kowalewski. He is the head of Ecclesia Credit, the specialist for financing and hedging of trade credit, which, like deas, is a subsidiary of the Ecclesia Group.
For companies operating globally, checking debtors according to compliance criteria is also becoming increasingly important. The modular component “KYBP Sanction Lists” can be used to compare sanction lists or PEP lists and to quickly and efficiently determine the beneficial owner via an interface. The results of the compliance check can then be used manually or automatically to initiate appropriate to-dos or to block limits. A multi-eye principle check is possible on a workflow basis.
Sustainability management made easy
The sustainability profile of business partners can also be checked and monitored using a modular extension of the ETCM. Structured information is processed in the system via interfaces to specialized credit reference agencies that evaluate the ESG profile of companies. This includes, for example, sustainability questionnaires that business partners fill out or CSR reports that are submitted. With our aim of thinking outside the box, we have now expanded the function of the ETCM. As a second field of application, the software offers monitoring of customers, suppliers and business partners in line with the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. The ETCM gives our clients more security in complying with legal requirements.”
Function offers unique selling point
Companies are forced to think about the digital mapping of their processes. The field of applications is becoming broader and more complicated. Solutions for merchandise management, credit insurance, treasury, business partner monitoring and others are introduced, have to be integrated and administered. This leads to heterogeneous IT system landscapes instead of a networked, overarching monitoring system that communicates with the companies' ERP software. The advantages of the Ecclesia Trade Credit Manager are obvious: the tool combines various functions in a central platform, enabling uniform control of the entire process, which is becoming increasingly complex, for and with the companies' customers and suppliers. In addition, the application is highly flexible and adaptable to the individual needs and requirements of the customer. This makes it possible to create and map company-specific rules and score cards. It is also possible to integrate business partners into the process. The application ensures maximum data security at all times and meets the data protection requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Ecclesia Credit Rating Cover
The added value of the platform is continuously increasing. Ecclesia Credit will soon be launching a new product based on the functions of the Ecclesia Trade Credit Manager: Ecclesia Credit Rating Cover. In view of the fact that debtors are systematically and continuously checked and monitored for their probability of default, Ecclesia Credit offers its clients a unique insurance solution. It is based on this assessment and allows credit limit coverage of up to €250,000 per debtor (depending on country and information) without having to make an explicit limit request to the credit insurer, as is the case with the normal credit insurance structure, with the extensive risk of the insurer suddenly cancelling the limit. For most companies, this is a quantum leap in the independent management of supplier credits. A considerable part of the credit limit volume on the debit side is thus directly accessible to the supplying company and no longer to the insurer – and with full insurance cover should insolvency or non-payment occur.
Ecclesia Credit Rating Cover was developed in cooperation with Atradius Kreditversicherung. This shows how highly a commercial credit insurer also rates the application of the Ecclesia Trade Credit Manager and delegates the decision-making authority for granting credit limits to a considerable extent to the software. It gives customers a high degree of autonomy, combined with fully digitized bad debt insurance. With innovative solutions like these, Ecclesia Credit is constantly shaping the future of modern credit management.