Australia and New Zealand sit firmly inside that pattern. Apolline Greiveldinger (pictured centre), Coface’s economist for Australia and New Zealand, said that persistent Middle East tensions were adding inflationary pressure and raising the risk of a stronger tightening cycle from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) – higher borrowing costs that would feed straight back into local insolvency numbers. The sensitivity she describes is not unique to Canberra: Coface has warned globally that a 25-basis-point rise in business lending rates, beyond what markets are already pricing, would be enough to push insolvency growth back towards 4% to 5% in 2026, wiping out the fragile deceleration currently forecast. The IMF, for its part, has flagged deteriorating conditions across emerging Asia and parts of the Middle East – precisely the buyer markets that Australian, New Zealand, European and North American exporters are shipping into. For brokers, that is the context every trade credit conversation now starts with: a buyer universe that is weakening simultaneously in almost every major export market.
