Bad Year for Yacht Insurance Companies

In recent months the industry journal The Insurance Insider has allocated space to the yacht industry and the losses incurred by insurance companies following a particularly unpleasant hurricane season.

The losses they say, “Will be punishing for the yacht market, which had already made an underwriting loss by the end of the first half of 2017.”

Hurricane Irma proved particularly devastating for the yacht market.

A Rhode Island-based yacht insurer has handed its Lloyd’s insurers $70mn in losses from the 2017 hurricane season,

Norwegian Hull Club had to warn its reinsurers of heavy losses from its London market marine hull book, after two fleets of the holiday operator Sunsail in St Martin and the British Virgin Islands were destroyed by Irma.

But other US and Caribbean yacht underwriters are counting their blessings after escaping the cat season with minimal losses.

One writer of Puerto Rican yacht cover is said to have not had a single loss, after vessels were moved before the storm hit the coast.

American International Group, Inc., also known as AIG, an American multinational insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions is understood to have assisted owners with the logistics of alternative mooring in yacht berths in areas away from the path of US-bound hurricanes.

On 24 October, the magazine reported that the Lloyd’s marine market would be hit with a EUR40.0mn ($47.2mn) claim from the superyacht Serene, which ran aground in the Red Sea in August.

MS Amlin was one of a number of markets on the hook for the Serene claim.