On Aon Podcast: Unlocking Capital for Power and Energy Companies

On Aon Podcast: Unlocking Capital for Power and Energy Companies
April 14, 2026 14 mins

On Aon Podcast: Unlocking Capital for Power and Energy Companies

On Aon Podcast Hero Image

Aon credit specialists discuss how leading power and energy organizations are using Risk Capital to drive confidence, continuity and growth

Key Takeaways
  1. Credit and political risk solutions are increasingly being used as strategic tools to support growth and strengthen trading relationships, not simply to transfer risk.
  2. Credit insurance enables leaders to manage unsecured exposure with confidence, preserving flexibility and decision making speed.
  3. By strengthening the credit quality of payment streams, organizations are unlocking additional bank and investor capital.

Intro:
Hello and welcome to On Aon — Aon’s global podcast that explores the top issues affecting businesses around the world. With each week focusing on either a Risk Capital, Human Capital, Industry or Global topic.

In today’s Risk Capital Insight episode, we’re diving into the Power and Energy sector—exploring how companies in today’s volatile environment can use Credit Solutions to grow, do business and unlock new sources of capital.

To help unpack what this looks like in practice, we’re joined by Aon experts

  • James Ponsford, Global Commodities Industry Leader, Credit Solutions, Aon
  • David Kinzel, Structured Credit & Political Risk US Leader, Credit Solutions, Aon
  • Meera Saunders, Client Director Structured Credit & Political Risk, Credit Solutions, Aon

James Ponsford:
Hello there and welcome to this Risk Capital episode on Aon. My name is James Ponsford. I head up our global commodities industry vertical here at Aon Credit Solutions. Today, we're going to be taking a deep dive into the power and energy sector and how companies can grow, unlock capital, secure trade in such complex and volatile times as the ones we are currently facing through these credit solutions.

We've got some great subject matter experts with us to unravel this topic today. Joining us are Aon Structured Credit and Political Risk US Practice Leader David Kinzel, and Meera Saunders, Client Director from our EMEA Structured Credit and Political Risk team at Aon. David and Meera, welcome.

Meera Saunders:
Thank you, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

David Kinzel:
Thanks, James. Great to be here.

James Ponsford:
Excellent. So welcome both. Look, there's no denying that the power and energy sector is caught up in a new wave of geopolitical escalation at this point in time. Obviously, at the start of the year, we saw US intervention in Venezuela. And noting Venezuela holds circa 20% proven crude reserves, this is naturally going to impact the global energy market.

Now we've most recently seen, unfortunately, the Middle East crisis unravel between the US, Israel and Iran that has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which roughly accounts for one fifth of the world's oil trade passing through the Persian Gulf. And this will naturally have a knock on impact. Effect on supply chains. We've already seen a spike in energy prices. Crude and Brent oil just going above $100 a barrel, and the TTF gas index currently hovering at just above 50 euros a megawatt hour. Now, this increase in prices is putting immense pressure on counterparty limits. But amid all this volatility, power and energy companies still need to find new clients, secure capital, and make sure the business they currently do is safe.

There are three pertinent issues we're going to look to address in the panel today. The first is market risk, where we're looking to tackle adverse private movements in energy commodities from both the geopolitical and macroeconomic position. The second is credit risk in terms of a risk that trading partner defaults on their payment or delivery obligations because of liquidity or bankruptcy or insufficient collateral being in place. And the third are emerging risks. And this ranges from everything, such as regulatory risk, sustainability risk, through to sanction risk. Now, sanction risk we saw become much more prominent following Russia's invasion of the Ukraine back in February 2022, when we do feel like the credit political risk insurance market has become better equipped to deal with sanctions that remain ever fluid at this point in time. Meera, I'd like to start with yourself. How can credit solutions help power and energy companies manage these risks effectively?

Meera Saunders:
So we see sophisticated energy companies utilizing credit solutions as a tool to enable them to continue operating in their business and grow, rather than just as a way of offloading or risk. For example, credit solution policy can allow them to enhance their trading relationships and therefore promote revenue growth. We often find companies utilizing credit insurance to create additional headroom on large credit concentrations.

And this permits them to trade more or offer their clients an additional cargo and therefore giving them a competitive edge. And particularly at the moment, it's quite relevant. As James mentioned, energy prices are through the roof. So where a company might have been either at their internal capacity or coming up to it, they might now be breaching it. And so they need to create headroom. So credit insurance can ensure that they are being compliant with their own credit procedures and continue to serve their clients.

Again, we're seeing credit insurance being used to target new markets or new regions, particularly allowing them to build up experience in areas that may be new.

We also have quite innovative solutions that allow clients to mitigate from big fluctuations in market risks and these things could impact their profitability. So an example would be ensuring that the replacement cost of energy is covered should their counterparty fail, not just the physical cost. And this should take out some of the volatility around pricing. And this solution can be used both in the buying and selling side. So we could arrange cover that.

If your supplier of energy fails and you need to seek a new supplier in an environment where prices have increased, that differential could have been covered. Ultimately, insurance exists as a way of mitigating for unexpected loss. So energy companies should continue to utilize insurance to provide a bit more security. James briefly mentioned sanctions. And of course, this has become a lot more pertinent since the Russian-Ukraine war started.

And one thing we've learned since that is insurance companies have become a bit more sophisticated and are able to adapt to movements in sanctions because they are often fluid. And we often find that where sanctions come in place, insurance companies are able to suspend cover rather than avoid it entirely so that claims can be resolved at the appropriate times.

James Ponsford:
Excellent. Thank you, Meera. Very insightful. And David, I'll come to you next. I'd love to hear your thoughts, perhaps from a US producer side with the spike in energy and all prices. How do you see this playing out in terms of the opportunities and the challenges ahead?

David Kinzel:
Yeah, that's a good point, James. I think what we're going to see is definitely an increase in commodity prices in energy. And what that's going to do is directly correlate to higher credit risk to counterparties. That's going to be a situation where people are just going to be more exposed, where they could have internal thresholds where they were comfortable with. Suddenly we've seen those levels go up 20, 30 percent overnight.

And it's putting credit risk managers in a difficult position where they're looking for different ways to have tools to mitigate or manage their risks. So their options can be a number of different solutions. One of those being asking the counterparty to post letters of credit, to add additional support from the counterparty side.

Those are going to be met with resistance. But what we can see is credit insurance is a unsecured tool that companies can use and get put in place pretty quickly. So it's going to be very powerful for credit risk managers to start exploring this. The other area that I think we could talk about is the ability for the insurance to unlock capital. Like that's a key area that we've seen big opportunity in the energy space. So what we're doing is we're looking at the counterparty risk and we're essentially using credit insurance as a credit enhancement.

So, while it's not a financial guarantee, the insurance contracts have continued to get better and better where we've negotiated them so they can get the internal treatment of a credit enhancement. And that just has such a profound ability to increase either getting debt from banks or getting more equity investment from investors because we're enhancing that counterparty credit risk, which is really the lifeblood of a lot of these companies.

So, getting that income in the door, getting that certainty around continued payment streams just has a big effect on working with banks. And so if you look at it like an example for LNG projects, so LNG exporters in the US, most of them are exporting overseas to either Europe to Japan, and we're going to see an increase of prices there. A lot of those offtake agreements are, some of them are fixed price. Some of those have variable contracts as well.

So, the fixed price contracts, they're in situations where they're not going to see an increase in the amount of credit risk, but those same off-takers may be paying more for their supply from other suppliers. So therefore their credit risk is going to be higher because their input costs are going to go up. And so when we look at this off-take agreement, you could almost look at it essentially as like a bond stream.

Right? So if we have this bond stream of payments that are coming in over 15 or 20 years, if we can credit enhance that bond stream, then it just puts the company in such a better position when they're speaking to lenders. Can they get larger debt levels? Can they get more investment from equity investors? Because they have, they can say that this income stream is secured by credit insurance.

So there's just a number of different ways that the ability of insurance to unlock capital can be more powerful for companies.

James Ponsford:
Thanks, David. Very insightful. I think that the Middle East situation is probably arguably the biggest geopolitical event we've seen since Russia's invasion of the Ukraine back in February 2022. And obviously, at that time, we saw a number of energy clients, banks coming to the credit political risk market to look to use credit political risk insurance as that distribution tool. I think it becomes incredibly relevant at this point in time. David, I'll go to yourself in terms of — maybe you could provide an overview of the key suites of credit, political risk and surety solutions that Aon is able to offer.

David Kinzel:
Absolutely, James. Yeah, so it can get a little bit confusing because there's so much nomenclature in the insurance market. But to make it simple, the broad themes are we have credit insurance. So credit insurance can be protection for anything from short-term receivables to longer-term payment obligations.

So that's the differentiator of trade credit insurance and structured credit insurance as you get into the longer duration and become structured credit insurance. But regardless, the concept is the same. What the insurance is going to do is going to protect the insured, the buyer of the policy in the event that their counterparty defaults on a payment obligation. And so it's just credit protection around a payment obligation.

And when we look at political risk, so this is another area that can be also built into credit insurance, political risk, if there's a non-payment due to a political risk event. So this could be the inability to convert currency, restrictions around currency payments. So you have an obligor or a counterparty that wants to pay you, but they can't because the political environment has restricted them.

The other area of political risk insurance is this is more for investments, assets in other countries, if we're going to have situations where we're concerned about maybe there's going to be a government confiscation, maybe there's going to be some type of cancellation of an export license that makes it so your operation, can't operate it any further. So these things that used to feel more and more like remote possibilities, low frequency events are becoming higher probability in higher frequency as we see geopolitical tensions increase around the world.

And so political risk insurance is something that we're actively seeing more energy and power companies look at more aggressively as we come into 2026 and continue to see some of this uncertainty. Political risk insurance can also cover offtake agreements with government counterparties.

So if we think of the power project in say an emerging market that power supply to the government entity, if that government entity defaults, then that could be an area that political risk insurance can pick up. And last but certainly not least would be surety. So surety is essentially a very similar tool to credit insurance, but the other side. So the counter party has the ability to use surety as a tool to support the producer or another entity that's providing or that's requiring some type of credit support.

We've seen the surety market become a much bigger, much more utilized tool in the energy and power space, replacing essentially letters of credit. So freeing up lot of capacity and liquidity on the balance sheet by using surety products as a way to enhance the credit, but then also again, replace letters of credit.

James Ponsford:
No, thanks. Thanks, David. And I think particularly, I mean, myself personally in Singapore, looking at the Asia region principally, you know, how Asia is being impacted by the Middle East activity with 80% of crude oil and natural gas being sourced through the Strait of Hormuz. We are going to see essentially here now more extreme government actions as a result of potentially what could unfold into an energy security crisis if the situation does rumble on. So I think really interesting.

And David, I really like the holistic view you have there and the full suite of products that can help our clients help their liquidity needs. Very interesting. Meera, in terms of how can Aon help clients? And I mean, what are the capabilities and solutions that Aon has in this space?

Meera Saunders:
I think one of the key things that we have to highlight is that Aon is quite unique in that we have 700 colleagues working in the credit solution space globally, which is larger than any other broker in the world. This global reach enables us to connect our clients with the ideal carrier partners and ensure that they get the required coverage.

In particular, we have a global industry vertical for the power and energy companies to ensure that we're providing consistency of service and the global breadth for the best solutions. In every way, Aon's approach to each and every client is to ensure we understand their business and therefore find a solution that is structured to optimize their business needs, ensure that they get the coverage that they require within a cost that is acceptable to them.

We have in-house risk analysts that we can all rely on to ensure that we are providing our clients with insights which are supported by Aon's capacity optimization tools. And this is all created to ensure that we provide our clients with an enhanced level of capacity. We complement all of this with our digital tools that ensures that we stay up to date with the most relevant information.

James Ponsford:
So thank you, everyone, for our show today. And thank you for taking the time to listen. If you'd like to find out more about Aon Credit Solutions and talk to an Aon colleague about how we can help you, please do head to aon.com. We'll be back in the coming months with more risk capital topics including more about analytics, supply chain risk, and a latest look at the reinsurance trends.

Thanks for listening and until next time.

Outro:
Thanks for tuning into the latest episode of On Aon. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to visit Aon.com to learn more about Aon.

We’ll be back next week with another episode — our Human Capital Insight — where we’ll be looking at an increasingly important topic for business leaders — pay transparency.

General Disclaimer

The information contained herein and the statements expressed are of a general nature and are not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and timely information and use sources we consider reliable, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.

Terms of Use

The contents herein may not be reproduced, reused, reprinted or redistributed without the expressed written consent of Aon, unless otherwise authorized by Aon. To use information contained herein, please write to our team.

Aon's Better Being Podcast

Our Better Being podcast series, hosted by Aon Chief Wellbeing Officer Rachel Fellowes, explores wellbeing strategies and resilience. This season we cover human sustainability, kindness in the workplace, how to measure wellbeing, managing grief and more.

Aon Insights Series Asia

Expert Views on Today's Risk Capital and Human Capital Issues

Aon Insights Series Pacific

Expert Views on Today's Risk Capital and Human Capital Issues

Aon Insights Series UK

Expert Views on Today's Risk Capital and Human Capital Issues

Client Trends 2025

Better Decisions Across Interconnected Risk and People Issues.

Construction and Infrastructure

The construction industry is under pressure from interconnected risks and notable macroeconomic developments. Learn how your organization can benefit from construction insurance and risk management.

Cyber Resilience

Our Cyber Resilience collection gives you access to Aon’s latest insights on the evolving landscape of cyber threats and risk mitigation measures. Reach out to our experts to discuss how to make the right decisions to strengthen your organization’s cyber resilience.

Employee Wellbeing

Our Employee Wellbeing collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team. You can also reach out to the team at any time for assistance with your employee wellbeing needs.

Environmental, Social and Governance Insights

Explore Aon's latest environmental social and governance (ESG) insights.

Q4 2023 Global Insurance Market Insights

Our Global Insurance Market Insights highlight insurance market trends across pricing, capacity, underwriting, limits, deductibles and coverages.

Global Risk Management Survey

Better Decisions Across Interconnected Risk and People Issues.

Regional Results

How do the top risks on business leaders’ minds differ by region and how can these risks be mitigated? Explore the regional results to learn more.

Impact Report 2025

Explore Aon's corporate sustainability impact and strategy.

Top 10 Global Risks

Trade, technology, weather and workforce stability are the central forces in today’s risk landscape.

Industry Insights

These industry-specific articles explore the top risks, their underlying drivers and the actions leaders are taking to build resilience.

Human Capital Analytics

Our Human Capital Analytics collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team. Contact us to learn how Aon’s analytics capabilities helps organizations make better workforce decisions.

Human Capital Quarterly Insights Briefs

Read our collection of human capital articles that explore in depth hot topics for HR and risk professionals, including using data and analytics to measure total rewards programs, how HR and finance can better partner and the impact AI will have on the workforce.

Insights for HR

Explore our hand-picked insights for human resources professionals.

Workforce

Our Workforce Collection provides access to the latest insights from Aon’s Human Capital team on topics ranging from health and benefits, retirement and talent practices. You can reach out to our team at any time to learn how we can help address emerging workforce challenges.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Our Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders to help dealmakers make better decisions. Explore our latest insights and reach out to the team at any time for assistance with transaction challenges and opportunities.

Natural Resources and Energy Transition

The challenges in adopting renewable energy are changing with technological advancements, increasing market competition and numerous financial support mechanisms. Learn how your organization can benefit from our renewables solutions. 

Navigating Volatility

How do businesses navigate their way through new forms of volatility and make decisions that protect and grow their organizations?

Parametric Insurance

Our Parametric Insurance Collection provides ways your organization can benefit from this simple, straightforward and fast-paying risk transfer solution. Reach out to learn how we can help you make better decisions to manage your catastrophe exposures and near-term volatility.

Pay Transparency and Equity

Our Pay Transparency and Equity collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's human capital team on topics ranging from pay equity to diversity, equity and inclusion. Contact us to learn how we can help your organization address these issues.

Property Risk Management

Forecasters are predicting an extremely active 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Take measures to build resilience to mitigate risk for hurricane-prone properties.

Technology

Our Technology Collection provides access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders on navigating the evolving risks and opportunities of technology. Reach out to the team to learn how we can help you use technology to make better decisions for the future.

Trade

Our Trade Collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's thought leaders on navigating the evolving risks and opportunities for international business. Reach out to our team to understand how to make better decisions around macro trends and why they matter to businesses.

Transaction Solutions Global Claims Study

Better Decisions Across Interconnected Risk and People Issues.

Weather

With a changing climate, organizations in all sectors will need to protect their people and physical assets, reduce their carbon footprint, and invest in new solutions to thrive. Our Weather Collection provides you with critical insights to be prepared.

Workforce Resilience

Our Workforce Resilience collection gives you access to the latest insights from Aon's Human Capital team. You can reach out to the team at any time for questions about how we can assess gaps and help build a more resilience workforce.

More Like This

View All
View All
Subscribe CTA Banner