Insurance-Enabled Resilience in Global Manufacturing Supply Chains: A Qualitative Analysis of Political Risk Insurance Policy Documents

Abstract

The intensification of geopolitical tensions, the deepening of climate-related risks and the continuous restructuring of global supply chains after the COVID-19 epidemic have made the overseas supply chain risks faced by manufacturing enterprises increasingly complex. As a risk transfer and risk management tool, insurance has a significant impact on the resilience of overseas supply chains of manufacturing enterprises through mandatory and voluntary arrangements (Faure, 2006; Christopher & Peck，2004）。 Based on the theory of supply chain risk management (Ponomarov & Holcomb, 2009; Sahab & Oulfarsi, 2026) and international business theory, using qualitative literature analysis method (Bowen, 2009), taking the open access policy publication Investment Policy Monitoring 30: Political Risk Insurance of UNCTAD (UNCTAD, 2025) as the main analysis text, supplemented by peer-reviewed literature on supply chain resilience that can be retrieved through the open academic platform. This analysis clarifies the specific path of embedding political risk insurance and export credit insurance into the risk management system of overseas supply chain of manufacturing enterprises, and compares the different contributions of compulsory insurance arrangements and voluntary insurance arrangements. The analysis shows that: (1) export credit agencies are the main providers of political risk insurance, accounting for 78% of the total circulation in the past decade, while manufacturing projects account for 20% of all insured projects from 2019 to 2023, which is the highest among all industries (UNCTAD, 2025); (2) Insurance mechanism enhances the adaptability and resilience of supply chain through risk identification, risk mitigation and liquidity support (Pettit, Croxton and Fiksel, 2013; El Baz and Ruel, 2021). (3) In the high-risk market with significant information asymmetry and externalities, policy-based (quasi-compulsory) insurance arrangements bear disproportionate risks, while commercial (voluntary) arrangements provide enterprises with a more flexible and complementary risk management tool (Faure, 2006; UNCTAD, 2025). Finally, this study puts forward the management enlightenment to insurance companies, manufacturing enterprise managers and policy makers, and expounds the limitations of the study and the future research direction.