{"id":12316,"date":"2018-08-29T15:41:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T12:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/sp-affirms-atis-a-rating-and-stable-outlook-owing-to-strong-capitalization-and-rapid-membership-growth-across-africa\/"},"modified":"2018-08-29T15:41:36","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T12:41:36","slug":"sp-affirms-atis-a-rating-and-stable-outlook-owing-to-strong-capitalization-and-rapid-membership-growth-across-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/sp-affirms-atis-a-rating-and-stable-outlook-owing-to-strong-capitalization-and-rapid-membership-growth-across-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"S&#038;P affirms ATI\u2019s \u2018A\u2019 Rating and Stable Outlook owing to strong capitalization and rapid membership growth across Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NAIROBI, 29 August 2018<\/strong> \u2013 After its recently concluded annual review of the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI), S&amp;P Global Ratings (S&amp;P) affirmed the company\u2019s \u2018A\u2019 for Financial Strength and Counterparty Credit as well as its \u201cStable\u2019 outlook. The rating is based on ATI\u2019s increased market penetration, expanding shareholder base, and an expectation of continued expansion and stabilization of its preferred creditor status.<\/p>\n<p>In the report, S&amp;P notes \u201c<em>ATI\u2019s expansion and relevance in the region is bolstered by its strong shareholder support. It currently has 23 paid-up shareholders, including the African Development Bank, and its shareholder base has grown from seven initial member countries to 14 fully-fledged member countries. In the past two years alone, Ethiopia, Cote d\u2019Ivoire, South Sudan and Zimbabwe have joined<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With five prospective new members in the pipeline, including Nigeria and Ghana, S&amp;P stated that they expect \u201c<em>this momentum to continue over the medium term.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ATI\u2019s rapid business growth supported by a more diversified portfolio also led to S&amp;P\u2019s assessment of a \u201c<em>strong business profile<\/em>\u201d. For instance, ATI\u2019s Gross exposures have increased by 23% in 2017 to USD2.4 billion compared to USD872 million in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>In the report, ATI\u2019s business profile was seen to be constrained by the potential pace of sovereign recoveries and member Government\u2019s treatment of ATI\u2019s preferred creditor status, which is meant to ensure automatic reimbursement by governments for any sovereign claims incurred. S&amp;P acknowledged that payment delays from four member governments in 2016 and 2017 have now mostly been resolved, with the exception of Tanzania, which recently had its outstanding sovereign arrear of USD4.2 million deducted from its capital contribution to ATI. An increase in ATI\u2019s commercial (non-sovereign) claims was assessed as in line with larger underwriting volumes and the broader industry standard.<\/p>\n<p>To rectify the issue of sovereign arrears, in 2016 ATI implemented a series of measures that include mandatory notifications and no objection requests for Political Risk Insurance transactions as well as strengthening strategic partnerships with member countries with the help of a newly hired Sr. Investment Relations Officer. ATI also expects to hire key staff to strengthen its risk management function.<\/p>\n<p>George Otieno, ATI\u2019s Chief Executive Officer, remarked \u201c<em>Expansion and prudent risk management have been key pieces of our strategy for some time.\u00a0 S&amp;P\u2019s current assessment affirms that what we have been doing is, we believe, moving us in the right direction to obtaining an eventual A+ rating, which ATI targets over the medium term.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ATI has maintained the current \u2018A\u2019 rating for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NAIROBI, 29 August 2018 \u2013 Afte [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-970"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atidi.africa\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}