Preface - Raymond van der Loos

Despite the challenges of 2008, Atradius Collections grew by 22% compared to 2007. We expect debt placement to grow significantly in 2009 as the economic uncertainty grows and countries suffer even worsening financial conditions.

2009 will continue to be challenging. Across the globe countries have moved into recession, liquidity in the market has dried up, payment behaviour among companies is deteriorating and bankruptcies across all countries are increasing. In this tough environment it is critical that you have the right partners in place to pull you through this situation. We are confident that we have the right tools and processes to help you meet and surmount the challenges that come your way. We have strong organisations in place in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific, and our Operations worldwide are now using one system that will make the speed of debt recovery even faster than it was. Our people are equipped with the right local knowledge and expertise in 18 countries and our global collections capability will enable us to help our customers to stay in business and operate even more efficiently than they have in the past.

At Atradius Collections, we are committed to our customers and to service excellence. To help us benchmark that, we conducted a survey with our non-insured customers to see what they thought of us right now and 64% were very satisfied with our services. In the article below, you will read a summary of our findings. If you have any questions or need more information about any of the articles in this newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact the client relationship team by clicking on the button in the right column of the email.

Your sincerely,

Raymond van der Loos

Director Atradius Collections