Structured Finance

Project & Structured Finance

EXIM offers a range of financing solutions for U.S. exporters and their international customers. Limited recourse (project) and structured financing are two options that offer maximum flexibility for project sponsors and help U.S. exporters compete globally in natural resource and infrastructure sectors.

EXIM can consider limited recourse project financing in most countries and has no country or project dollar limits.

In either project or structured finance, EXIM has two primary goals:

To maximize U.S. company participation in the transaction in order to support U.S. jobs; and
To lend responsibly for creditworthy projects in order to protect the interests of our "shareholders," the U.S. taxpayers.

Limited Recourse Project Finance

EXIM Bank's limited recourse project finance is an arrangement in which EXIM lends to newly created project companies and looks to the project's future cash flows as our source of repayment instead of relying directly on foreign governments, financial institutions or established corporations for repayment of the debt.

This financing arrangement is especially appropriate where hard currency revenues can be captured offshore or long-term off-take contracts insure project cash flows. EXIM will work with project developers or equity participants to develop a structure that can be sustained throughout the project's operations.

EXIM is also looking at other innovative structures such as risk sharing with suppliers and reinsurance in order to facilitate transactions in important industry sectors that may not meet these criteria.

Structured Finance

Through "structured finance," EXIM can consider existing companies overseas as potential borrowers based on their creditworthiness as reflected on their balance sheet and other sources of collateral or security enhancements.

EXIM has done structured transactions such as multiple-country fiber-optic cable, oil and gas projects, air traffic control, telecommunications and manufacturing entities.

Program Benefits

EXIM Bank's project and structured finance features many benefits, including:

Responsiveness - You receive your letters of interest in seven days or less (and you can request them on line) or a preliminary project letter within 45 days of formally applying for financing.
Transparency - You can estimate our exposure fees, get detailed application information, and look at all of EXIM Bank's published documentation (including environmental guidelines, country limitations, and project criteria). See links on this page.
Availability - No country or project limits.

We are also working to improve our program in many areas, including:

Coverage - Offering comprehensive coverage for a greater variety of projects.
Dependability - Converting past political risk only construction guarantees into comprehensive term loans and guarantees at "take out." We have successfully taken out more than 18 projects and have financed an additional 30 projects on a comprehensive basis through construction and operation.
Cooperation - Sharing financial and legal advisors with other lenders and initiating inter-creditor dialogues earlier in a project life cycle.
Creativity - Looking at alternatives to traditional, contractually based offtake arrangements that include risk sharing and unique structures in a diversity of challenging industry sectors. We may also be able to provide guarantees in non-traditional currencies.

An Award-Winning Program

Transactions supported by our Project Finance program are consistently selected for "Deal of the Year" awards. View a complete list of Project & Structured Finance deal awards ( Project-Finance-Deals-of-the-Year-2000-2013.pdf).

Our ever-expanding pipeline of new deals would seem to indicate that we're on the right track. But we're not resting on our laurels. We look forward to a strengthened dialogue with our customers in order to ensure that we are being responsive to our customers and our "shareholders."