Trade Credit Risk Management

Make better credit decisions. Control exposure. Protect cash flow.

A new customer wants 60-day payment terms. An established buyer has missed another payment promise. Your insurer has approved a limit, but can your business afford to use it?

These are everyday commercial decisions with consequences for sales, cash flow and profitability.

This practical online course from eBSI Trade Finance Academy helps you work through them. Learn how to assess customers, control credit exposure, understand trade credit insurance and respond when payment problems arise.

Turn credit sales into better-informed decisions

Offering credit can strengthen customer relationships and support growth. It can also leave your business funding a sale long before the money arrives.

Through realistic SME cases, worked examples and interactive decisions, you will learn to ask the right questions before granting credit, releasing another shipment or relying on an insurance policy.

You will explore how to:

• Assess whether a customer can pay and how much exposure your business can afford.
• Balance attractive payment terms with cash-flow needs and acceptable risk.
• Recognise warning signs and act before overdue balances grow.
• Understand what credit insurance may cover and which conditions affect a claim.
• Coordinate credit control, insurance and receivables finance.
• Build a practical process from customer onboarding through to collection and recovery.

Follow a business through real-world decisions

Throughout the course, you will follow HarbourFlow Supplies, a fictional SME selling industrial products domestically and internationally.

You will consider new customer applications, calculate funding gaps, review credit limits, interpret a specimen insurance schedule and decide how to respond to overdue payments.

Each case connects the commercial opportunity with the cash, evidence and controls needed to support it.

What you will study

1. Trade credit as a commercial and financing decision: Payment terms, early-payment discounts, working capital and the cash conversion cycle.
2. Understanding trade credit risk: Buyer risk, disputes, country exposure, payment diversion and concentration.
3. Assessing the customer and the exposure: Information quality, financial indicators, payment behaviour and credit judgement.
4. Credit policy, limits, monitoring and collections: Approval decisions, exposure controls, ageing and review triggers.
5. Transaction structure before insurance: Payment methods, contractual terms, delivery evidence and practical risk reduction.
6. Trade credit insurance fundamentals: Covered events, policy structures, retained risk and the limits of protection.
7. Understanding the policy and preserving cover: Buyer limits, reporting obligations, exclusions, deadlines and policy calculations.
8. Overdues, claims, recoveries and subrogation: Managing non-payment while preserving evidence and relevant rights.
9. Credit insurance and receivables finance: Funding eligibility, recourse, advance rates and lender interests.
10. Integrated trade credit risk management for SMEs: Bringing customer assessment, affordability, insurance and monitoring into one practical approach.

What is included

• Ten modules with 93 instructional screens.
• Narrated explanations and illustrated examples.
• Twelve interactive practical decisions with explanatory feedback.
• Three captioned videos with transcripts.
• A comprehensive student manual with worked examples, checklists and reference material.
• A glossary of 36 key terms.
• A separate 20-question assessment drawn from a 50-question bank, with a 60% pass mark.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for SME owners and managers, credit controllers, finance professionals, export and import practitioners, sales professionals who negotiate payment terms, and trade finance practitioners.

It is particularly relevant if you need to decide whether to grant credit, how much exposure to accept, whether to insure it and what to do when payment fails.

Build a more disciplined approach to credit

Finish the course with a clearer understanding of how to assess risk, document decisions, monitor exposure and use insurance as part of a practical credit-management process.

Enrol in Trade Credit Risk Management and develop the knowledge to make better-informed decisions across the credit-sales lifecycle.