Submit your article proposals for the BU Yearbook by Wednesday, 30 Sept

This year’s Yearbook will take a focused look at how the export credit and investment insurance industry is innovating and supporting global trade, ambitious projects, and critical sectors within a drastically changing operating environment. We are particularly interested in practical experience, including case studies and strong examples of new approaches to persistent and emerging challenges.

To guide proposals, we are seeking contributions across four thematic areas:

 - Strategic industries: How are ECAs and insurers rising to the moment as governments place greater emphasis on economic security and strategic industries? We welcome perspectives on the changing ECA mandate, critical minerals and resilient supply chains, product development, flexible finance, and support for strategically important sectors.

- Innovative risk sharing: How are institutions developing new ways to share risk and mobilise capital? We welcome perspectives on blended finance and its wider lessons, cooperation between MDBs, ECAs, and other key institutions, private insurance, institutional investors, and novel approaches that expand financing capacity. This section will complement, rather than duplicate, the Berne Union’s separate work on blended finance.

 - Digital transformation: How are AI and other digital technologies changing the business of export credit and insurance at the level of practice? We are particularly interested in examples of AI integration into business processes, the financing of digital infrastructure, and the concrete implications of digitalisation for risk, data, and operations.

 - Operating in conflict: What have institutions learned from supporting trade and investment during war and conflict? We are interested in practical experience around underwriting, claims, capacity, and reconstruction, as well as the implications of conflict for shipping and trade routes and the growing financing requirements of defence and dual-use industries.

We kindly ask for one proposal per institution. Please send a proposed topic and short synopsis to Eve Hall and Bella Liu by 30 September. Full articles will be due by 23 October. The editorial team will work with selected contributors to agree the final focus and scope of articles before full submissions are commissioned.