The AMAN UNION held its eighth Annual Meeting in Istanbul, Türkiye, from October 31 to November 2, 2017, hosted by the official export credit agency of Türkiye, Export Credit Bank of Türkiye. The Meeting brought together the AMAN UNION’s Members as well as honorable guests from the industry to discuss the important issues in the credit insurance and reinsurance sector, export credit and trade finance and to tackle the challenges faced in these areas.

The meeting kicked off with welcome addresses by the Chairman of General Assembly Mr. Adnan YILDIRIM; Mr. Fahad Al Ibrahim as Chairman of Executive Council; Mr. Oussama KAISSI as the AMAN UNION Secretary General; H.E. Nihat ZEYBEKCI, Minister of Economy (Türkiye); H.E. Binali YILDIRIM, Prime Minister of Türkiye. The opening ceremony included a ceremony of the transferring the chairmanship of the General Assembly as well. After the opening session, Mr. Cheikh Ahmed DIOP, from Chief Economist Complex, the Islamic Development Bank, gave a keynote speech regarding “Financial Implications of the Brexit decision on the OIC Member Countries”.

The Sessions started with a presentation on ‘Development in Products, Systems Organization in 2017 and Business Expectations for 2018,’ followed by a presentation about AMAN UNION performance analysis delivered by Mr. Mourad Mizouri from the Secretariat General of the AMAN UNION, where the Presenter announced that the members supported an amount of US$ 32.6 billion of trade and paid 85.0 million US$ claims during 2016. Other presentations consisted of “Investment Climate in OIC Member Countries: Prospects and Challenges by Mr. Cen TİNTİN – Senior Researcher at SESRIC”; “Settlement of Disputes in International Trade Finance” by Ms. Candan Yasan TEPETAS – Secretary General of Istanbul Arbitration Center”.

Day two of the Meeting witnessed an extensive workshop regarding “The Link between Trade Finance & Export Credit Insurance from Banks & Exporters Perspective”. Within the context of workshop, there were two parts namely Trade Finance and Structured Finance respectively.

Mr. Harun ÇELİK from ITFC, Mr. Fehmi TUTULMAZ from Ziraat Participation Bank, Ms. Sevtap İZGİ from Arçelik, Mr. Ural İNAL from Temsa, Mr. Anbarasan from ECGC and Mr. Vinco DAVID from Berne Union were the speakers for Part 1.

Mr. Oliver ROTH from ING, Ms. Ceren TAK from Deutsche Bank, Mr. Haydar ERGUN from SUMMA,
Mr. Walid SARIEDDINE from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mr. Toby HEPPEL from RFIB (Robert Fleming Insurance Brokers) made their presentations for the Part 2. Each part ended up with Open Discussions.

Furthermore, a signing ceremony took place where an MOU was signed by the Secretary General of AMAN UNION and Secretary General of Berne Union to strengthen the cooperation between both entities.

The AMAN UNION 8^th Annual Meeting concluded with the General Assembly of the AMAN UNION where plans for the coming years were presented, along with the introduction of the new members for AMAN UNION.