The superb performance of this fund during the recent years, which made it distinctive among its counterparts in the region, was the most important theme of press conference hold by Mr. SeyedKamal SeyedAli (EGFI’s Chairman and Managing Director), on January 18th, 2010.
He explained that EGFI’s issued insurance policies and guarantees in the first 10 months of current financial year reached USD 2.341 billion which is 30 times of the Fund’s portfolio in four years ago (when new team of management were assigned), with just USD 72 million of extended cover. This led to covering 12% of national non-oil exports this year which is much further than its counterparts’ in the region. Covering 5% of Iran’s non-oil exports was a target set for EGFI at the end of Irans Fourth "Five-Year Development Plan" (FYDP - March 2005 to March 2010), but now this fund’s performance far exceeds the goal set. Although other Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) portfolio is of bigger size, but due to large volume of their countries’ exports, the rate of cover of national exports is usually around 2-5%, as an example, TurkEximbank (Turkey’s ECA) covers around 4.5% of Turkish exports. The same story is true for some other countries such as Italy and Germany.
Paying less claims and designing no-claims bonus scheme
He also added that by analyzing EGFI’s activities since its re-establishment in 1994, although 88% of extended cover belongs to the last four years, but only 31% of claims is for the same period, which is a success for this fund as it shows better credit assessment and as well as management in many different aspects. To say in figures, the total cover extended since 1994 to 2005, is about USD 400 million, while it was USD 3866 million since 2005. On the other side, the total claims paid by EGFI is almost USD 70 million, while just USD 27 million of which belongs to the last four years. Moreover, “paying 500 thousand Euros to the clients as no-claims bonus is another prominent scheme started this year”, underlined SeyedAli.

Measures taken to improve services
To improve the quality of services and to support Iranian exporters more than before, this fund has taken some measures such as expanding cooperation with banking system (namely 8 public and 5 private banks) in Iran, as well as increasing the number of its marketing agencies in different provinces throughout the country.
International presence
According to EGFI’s Chairman and Managing Director, as EGFI’s portfolio level has passed the threshold required for membership in Berne Union (International Union of credit and investment insurers), it has applied for its membership some time ago. Up to now, EGFI has been just a member of Prague Club, the preliminary stage of the Berne Union. Moreover, Iran’s ECA was chosen as the member of “Executive Council” of AMAN UNION (Union of Islamic and Arab Credit and investment insurers) in this autumn.
Profits gained in this year
In another part of the press conference, SeyedAli referred to another distinctive feature of this ECA, which is profitability of this fund during this year. Although EGFI has been established by the government to help exporters and profitability is not a target for it, with a sound credit management, this fund gain a profit of USD 10.3 million for its operations in the current financial year, while some other profits have been gained through its investments activities. Contrasting EGFI’s profitability with other ECA’s (such as coface) which had a record loss during 2009 due to the global crisis makes this profitability more highlighted.