Enel Energia and SACE have signed an agreement that will make it easier for business customers to request to pay their electricity and gas bills in instalments. The purpose of the agreement is to provide the most favorable conditions for customers of Enel Energia – an Enel Group company that sells electricity and gas on the free market in Italy – in order to negotiate deferred bill payment through Cauzione Energia PMI, a fully digital solution implemented by SACE BT – the SACE Group company specializing in short-term trade credit insurance, surety bonds, and protection against construction risks – for supporting Italian SMEs affected by rising energy costs.
“The agreement further complements the program of extraordinary measures that we have implemented in order to mitigate the effects of the energy crisis for all our customers, whether business or residential,” said Nicola Lanzetta, Director of Enel Italia. “We will also implement this plan in the coming months, taking into consideration the evolution of the scenario and the developments of the measures recently adopted by the Italian Government.”
“The agreement with Enel Energia proves that the SACE Group is committed to helping Italian businesses tackle rising energy costs, ensuring business continuity with tangible solutions that meet their actual needs in a rather complex scenario,” said Valerio Perinelli, General Manager at SACE BT. “Cauzione Energia PMI has made it possible for us, at SACE BT, to once again prove that we are able to support small and medium-sized enterprises with an offer of comprehensive, easily accessible, and digitalized solutions.”
Designed to make it easier for instalment plans to be granted for amounts relating to electricity and gas consumption, the agreement allows companies to offer a payment guarantee, in the form of a surety bond, which is only issued once creditworthiness has been established, in the amount of the deferred bills.
Once the SMEs have negotiated the structure of the instalment plan for one or more energy bills with Enel Energia, they can request a surety bond online at sace.it. A simulator is available on the website, which provides an initial indication in real time of whether the request is acceptable and of how much the surety bond will cost based on 2021 budget data. SACE BT will analyze the request and, should the evaluation process be successful, will issue the guarantee to be submitted digitally to Enel Energia.
The agreement benefited from the exemption from the application of the regulations on transactions between related parties based on the provisions of the procedure adopted by Enel regarding transactions carried out through subsidiaries.