Recognition doesn’t come much better than this.
It may be insurance awards season, but one insurance professional has gone above and beyond by scooping an honour from Her Majesty the Queen, herself.
Aon’s Susan Ross (pictured), account director for its credit international division in the UK, is today picking up an MBE from the Queen as recognition for her tireless campaigning for the UK’s export economy.
Having been a trade credit broker with Aon since the mid-1980s, Ross has also been a volunteer member of the British Exporters Association for over a decade. That tenure has seen her campaign for the re-launch of the UK Export Finance Bond Support scheme which is meant to benefit companies as they bid for overseas business. In part thanks to her campaigning, it was reintroduced in 2011 and has since been utilised by more than 220 companies.
“I’m really proud of the work BExA has done and I am delighted to have been acknowledged for my part in its achievements,” she said. “The UK was performing poorly against the rest of the world for the provision of export finance and I believed passionately that this would have to change if we were to give companies a chance at competing. Before the Bond Support Scheme, companies were turning away export business because of the cash flow challenges.”
Ross also believes that trade credit is playing an increasingly important role in the search for overseas business.
“Sometimes perfectly profitable businesses will struggle because of the working capital needed to fulfil contracts,” she noted. “Solutions that improve cash flow are a vital part of the financial toolkit and as we have seen, can be the difference between merely staying afloat, or winning new business to expand.”
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