We are happy to share an insight into ICIEC’s workings in our meet the team feature. Here we show you what key team members do with us, how and why. This quarter we introduce you to Miguel Kosasih, who is Country Manager at ICIEC’s Jakarta Office. We asked Miguel five questions to get a steer on his work in Indonesia, and wider Asia, and gain a view on the important role ICIEC is playing in Asia, particularly in the energy transition.
1.What is it you do at ICIEC, and how did you get here?
I’m currently serving as Country Manager for ICIEC’s Jakarta office in Indonesia. This position, which is a real privilege to have, is mainly a business origination and development role. I’m responsible for developing and expanding ICIEC’s de-risking interventions and portfolio for both inward and outward trade transactions and investments between ICIEC Member States in the South-east Asia (SEA) region, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam.
I joined ICIEC in late October 2019, only a few months before the pandemic outbreak. Before that, I spent around 10 years working at PT Asuransi Asei Indonesia, which is Indonesia’s national Export Credit Agency (ECA). That was where I first got introduced to export credit and political risk insurance, and the ECA world in general. Prior to assuming the ECA role, I had a brief stint working on the legal staff at a private commercial bank, but I realised I wasn’t keen to pursue a career as a corporate or litigation lawyer, despite obtaining both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in international public law. I was initially drawn to becoming a public servant to the country either as a diplomat or trade attaché, but not long after I was immersed in this specialised industry, I realised that working for the national ECA offered the same level of contribution, given its strategic mandate to support the country’s exports through risk mitigation.
Having been assigned and rotated to various functions during my 10-year employment at the ECA, which included marketing, product development, reinsurance, underwriting, claims and recovery, I had the opportunity to acquire the technical know-how, experience, and operational oversight of how export credit and political risk insurance inquiries are managed and processed from front to back end. This is what prepared me for taking on this important role at ICIEC and made my transition to and familiarisation with ICIEC’s solutions and internal processes a lot easier.
2. What does your typical day involve/tell me about your team in Indonesia and how it works, and the markets you cover in Asia?
At ICIEC’s Jakarta office, I work in tandem with another colleague, Shaiful Kamarul, who is assigned as Senior Country Manager. He essentially led the establishment of the office and started ICIEC’s ground operations in the country and region in 2018, one year before I joined ICIEC. He is a Malaysian national, which makes our overall communication and coordination in distributing the tasks and responsibilities easier, given our similarities in culture and language. He focuses more on the Malaysian market, and I on Indonesia. Inquiries for (and from) Brunei Darussalam and other Asian markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China are distributed equally between us.
ICIEC’s Jakarta office is integrated within the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Group Regional Hub of Indonesia, which in total, comprises around 30 employees. The hub is led by an IsDB hub resident, who is supported by an IsDB country manager, several operation team leaders and supporting staff, all managing the interventions of the IsDB for the same SEA member countries as ICIEC. We also have colleagues from our sister entity, the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), which is the trade financing arm of the IsDB group.
The IsDB Group synergy has been one of the key success factors for raising ICIEC’s brand awareness and expanding its interventions in Indonesia and the SEA region. We have an existing insurance policy with ITFC, where we provide them with non-payment/credit default risk insurance cover for Indonesian export clients that they finance, allowing ITFC to expand its trade financing interventions to support Indonesian exporters’ working capital requirements which eventually contributes to the member country’s exports.
We also work closely with our IsDB colleagues in identifying and originating potential transactions for joint intervention. As Indonesia is a direct borrower from the IsDB, our IsDB colleagues work closely with the government, especially at the ministerial level, which helps us at ICIEC identify potential pipelines of strategic projects where ICIEC could also contribute through its risk mitigation/de-risking solutions complementing the overall interventions of the IsDB Group to our member countries.
All colleagues of the regional hub have formed a close bond with each other, which has created a family-like working atmosphere and makes coming to the office, while putting in the extra working hours to ensure smooth coordination with our HQ in Jeddah (as Jakarta is four hours ahead of Jeddah), even more enjoyable.
3. How does your role empower your clients – particularly in the field of energy transition in Asia?
One of our key roles/functions as business development is to identify the financing and investment needs of our member states to support their national development plans and connect those needs to the resources that we/ICIEC have in our own network. This is the same approach we apply when it comes to supporting our member states throughout their ‘net zero’ journeys in executing their energy transition plans as per their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) and commitments as signatories to the Paris Agreement.
As Asia is the highest contributor to the globe’s CO2 emissions (52%), there is an astounding US$40 trillion estimated funding gap for Asia to achieve its net zero targets by 2050. If you include Central Asia, we have around 12 member states from the continent. Each one of these is economically (and politically) differently situated. Each has different energy transition blueprints, climate frameworks and policies, resources/means and timelines to achieve their net zero targets. Some member states have easier access to financing/liquidity than others.
Business development is placed at ICIEC’s front line for its member states; hence it’s our role to do any necessary canvasing, to conduct and participate in dialogues with key stakeholders involved in each country’s climate framework, to identify the gaps that our member state governments require support for and treat those gaps as opportunities for ICIEC to step in and mobilise its resources through our de-risking solutions.
Indonesia, for example, requires around IDR3.416 trillion/US$221 billion to reach its NDC target in 2030 (reducing CO2 emissions by 29% or 41% with international assistance) and around IDR28.2 trillion/US$1.8 trillion to become net zero in 2060. The government can only spend around 35% (US$60 billion) of its budget to reach its NDC target in 2030 and is reliant on other sources to fill this funding gap.
Together with the IsDB Group, we have been in discussion with several key state-owned institutions that require financing to support Indonesia’s energy transition plan, which is included under the ‘SDG Indonesia One-Green Finance Facility (SIO-GFF)’, a platform devised by the Indonesia MoF to blend public and private financing (blended finance) aimed at channelling SDG-related infrastructure projects including energy transition, the first phase of which will mainly be focused on gradually decommissioning Indonesia’s coal-fired power plants and the second phase will be focused on developing new renewable energy assets.
4. What is the one thing about ICIEC that you think should be better understood by the wider world?
ICIEC’s role in our member states energy transaction and sustainable development, in general, is essentially catalytic. As an insurance provider, we may not be able to directly provide the financing to the projects, but we can mobilise resources by connecting those projects, and their stakeholders to the financial institutions that we work with that are already frequent users of our Political Risk Insurance/Foreign Investment Insurance policies, and that are also well familiarised with our internal due diligence and credit approval processes.
The financial institutions that are our policyholders not only benefit from the reduction on their risk-weighted assets, ensuring they obtain some degree of capital relief provided to them under our insurance policies but are also able to benefit from our Preferred Creditor Status (PCS) if, under a worst-case scenario, our member state borrowers fail to honour their financial obligations to our financial institution partners/insurance policyholders.
In addition to mobilising the financial resources, through our non-payment/contract frustration insurance programme, ICIEC can also bring in EPC companies that are well experienced in specific infrastructure sectors allowing our member states to get the expertise and technology transfer necessary to complete their strategic projects.
In essence, ICIEC offers a variety of de-risking solutions which enables us to support a particular project from different angles through different stakeholders.
5. What is your ‘superpower’?
As a normal human being, I can’t think of having any superpowers. In fact, the person that really has a superpower should be my wife. A working mother who can manage and balance her office duties with most of our daughter’s daily routines and school schedule is truly commendable and superpower worthy. A true manifestation that women are far better at multitasking than men!
But if I were able to equate a superpower to a certain quality or trait, I would describe myself as a person that is innately helpful to others. I try to support my colleagues the best I can whenever they need assistance or guidance on certain work-related matters. I am a true believer that sharing and exchanging experience and knowledge among colleagues only builds a stronger collective intelligence which would consequently boost the overall standards of the institution.
