1. Preventive measures
- Do not forget to include retention of title in your general terms and conditions of sale and in order confirmations. Retention of title gives you additional legal protection, allowing you under certain conditions to recover from buyers (especially German and British ones) an unpaid receivable, in case of an insolvency such as bankruptcy. We recommend having your payment terms reviewed by your legal advisor.
- Invoice within the period stated in the policy
- Respect the due dates on your invoices yourself and regularly remind debtors after due date according to a set procedure.
2. Deferred payment
If an invoice remains unpaid on the due date, you can grant deferred payment without consulting 
Atradius. However, the overdue invoice(s) must be paid in full before the expiry of the overdue period. The overdue period is specified in the policy and is usually (unless otherwise specified in the policy) calculated from the original due date of the invoice.
Watch this video by Sarah to learn more about deferred payment.
3. Negative information about your debtor's financial health
Inform the Customer Service Centre of any negative information such as, for example :
- A request for deferred payment until after the overdue period has expired;
- in case of documents against payment: no inclusion of the goods or the documents in an initial offer;
- you are convinced that the debtor will not be able to fulfil its contractual obligations;
- the non-payment of a bill of exchange or even exceptionally a cheque;
- proceedings instituted for non-payment of a claim against the debtor (by you or by another company).
In these cases, you can no longer use the self-assessment. Without notice to the contrary
the other credit limits will be retained.
You retain cover until the expiry of the overdue period of the (oldest) unpaid invoice or until Atradius withdraws the limit or exceptionally asks you to transfer the file for collection.
4. Stop deliveries
If a debtor does not pay on time, there comes a time when you stop shipping goods or performance of services. This is the case with:
- non-payment of a claim after the overdue period has expired (unless you have received our written consent);
- withdrawal of a credit limit or coverage on a country ;
- filing in damages and transfer for collection of the outstanding claim;
- in case of established insolvency (bankruptcy, WCO, etc.) of the debtor.
That is, any losses you incur by providing goods or services after the date of
of any of the above circumstances, are excluded from cover.
Note:
Even in case of payments exceeding the overdue period of invoices issued before the policy start date, the automatic stoppage of cover applies even if these invoices are not insured.
For all questions regarding deferred payment, delivery after withdrawal of the limit, debtor dunning or deferred filing, contact our Customer Service Centre.
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