Recovering commercial debt is set to become even more challenging for exporters as business insolvencies remain elevated in most countries and global fragmentation accelerates.
Against a backdrop of shifting trade routes, volatile protectionism, geopolitical uncertainties and higher digital risk, Allianz Trade warns that corporates and their insurers face a structurally tougher landscape for getting paid.
In the fourth edition of its Collection Complexity Score and Rating, Allianz Trade provided a snapshot for how companies try to recover unpaid invoices in 52 economies representing 90% of global GDP and global trade. The 2026 edition expanded coverage to include Egypt, Peru, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Allianz Trade estimated that 48% of international trade receivables are now in countries with either "Very High" (22%) or "Severe" (26%) collection complexity, equivalent to about US$1.1 trillion of global trade exposure. That share is one percentage point higher than in 2022, but in absolute terms the at-risk pool has grown significantly with the expansion of global trade.
From an insurance perspective, the expectations of higher loss-given-default in many export markets are increasing. Depending on the country, international receivables typically account for between 10% and 25% of total trade receivables and Allianz Trade noted an inverse relationship - meaning, the higher a country's collection complexity, the lower the share of international receivables tends to be and vice versa.
Looking at local payment practices, court proceedings and insolvency frameworks, Allianz Trade identified Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal as the three easiest jurisdictions in which to recover international debt. These markets tend to offer more predictable payment culture, relatively efficient and accessible courts and insolvency regimes that support structured recoveries for unsecured creditors.
At the other end of the spectrum, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and the UAE are ranked as the most complex environments for exporters attempting to collect overdue invoices, due to less reliable payment behaviour, limited or opaque legal recourse and insolvency processes. The report noted that international debt collection is almost three times more complex in Saudi Arabia than in Germany.
Over the past four years, three out of five countries in Allianz Trade’s sample have seen a change in their collection complexity score, with an almost equal balance between improvements and deteriorations.
Decreases in complexity were most evident among some of the historically most difficult markets, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and China. Meanwhile, increases in complexity were usually moderate, with notable rises in Australia, Belgium, Senegal and the US. Most advanced economies now show a “notable” level of complexity, while the Middle East and Africa remain, on average, the two most complex regions.
Allianz Trade also highlighted that insolvency proceedings remain the single largest driver of collection complexity in every region, accounting for between 46% of the overall score in Asia and 58% in Western Europe. Once a buyer enters formal insolvency, the chances of full recovery for unsecured trade creditors, and by extension their insurers, fall sharply, especially in jurisdictions with creditor-unfriendly regimes or slow, costly court processes.
Local payment practices also stand out as a major source of difficulty. In the Middle East, long and unpredictable payment terms, frequent delays and informal practices increase the likelihood of default and complicate enforcement, but similar issues are present in many other markets. Court‑related complexities are generally less frequent in Western Europe than in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Meanwhile, Allianz Trade found that the benefit of digitalization has yet to materialise. E‑invoicing, while clearly beneficial in principle, has so far rolled out unevenly across Europe, creating a patchwork of national systems, formats and timelines, according to the report.
For multinational insureds, this can increase short‑term compliance complexity rather than reduce it, as each country moves at its own pace with its own technical specifications. The EU’s “VAT in the Digital Age” (ViDA) reforms, agreed in early 2024, are expected to harmonise e‑invoicing rules across the bloc by 2030, which should, over time, support more transparent, timely invoicing and potentially improve payment discipline and documentation. Until then, however, digital fragmentation remains another moving part in the risk equation, Allianz Trade said.
