WorkBoat Columns

By Chris Richmond
For March 2023  WorkBoat Magazine.

Keeping your working vessel and business covered for liability claims does not stop at the water’s edge. While you may be focused on the liability you have while working on the water, don’t forget about the liability that you may be exposed to on dry land.

Chances are the crew on your working commercial vessel are covered under Protection and Indemnity for an injury or illness occurring while they are in service to the ship.  This coverage extends to crew while they are away from the boat but on ship business.  But what if a crewmember gets into an accident while driving to the marine supply store and, worse, another person is injured?

In a motor vehicle accident,  the vehicle’s coverage is primary. This means that if you send your employee to the store in their own vehicle to pick up some supplies for your boat and they get into an accident, their personal automobile coverage will be the primary insurance should someone get injured.  Required automobile liability limits vary from state to state and if the accident is severe your employee’s personal auto policy may not carry sufficient limits to pay for the damages. In case like this, you can expect your business will be dragged into this.

This is where non-owned auto coverage comes in. This is a coverage which extends third party liability limits for accidents involving your employees when your business is sued.  There are number of ways to have this rolled into your overall insurance package. A non-owned auto  policy can be covered by any excess liability policy that you may have or coverage can be attached to your business’ commercial auto policy. Alternatively,  non-owned auto coverage often can be included in your general liability policy.  Last resort would be a stand-alone policy.  The premium for non-owned auto is based on the number of employees and generally is reasonably priced.

Dan Bookham, AAI

By Dan Bookham for February 2023 WorkBoat Magazine

With 2022 rapidly receding to stern but with the new year still as fresh as a cadet on their first cruise, I thought this would be as good a column as any to step back from coverage and safety details and instead give a high-level view of how the marine insurance landscape appears to be shaping up for 2023.

The phrase to familiarize yourself with above all others this year is “hard market.” Insurance is subject to a range of forces − claims activity, social inflation in jury awards, stock market performance, inflation and the overall state of the economy, the availability and affordability of reinsurance, the end of an era of cheap capital, geopolitical concerns and climate instability, among others. These factors combine to harden the market by driving insurers into a defensive posture to protect their balance sheets. In a hard market, premiums increase, underwriting becomes much more selective, the capacity to offer policies decreases and insurance carriers become less aggressive competitors. There’s no point in soliciting your competition’s customers if you don’t have the capacity or appetite to write the risk.

Economy-wide, inflation and labor issues are big drivers of disruption, as is the drying up of the cheap capital well (which funded large tranches of reinsurance) and the challenging performance of the financial markets – most insurers invest portions of the premium they collect to offset claims losses and to generate additional revenue. In the marine universe, the supply and cost issues around energy and distillates, the war in Ukraine, climate driven uncertainty, record-smashing hull, cargo and property claims and huge settlements and nuclear jury awards on P&I claims all have insurers battening the hatches.

We are also seeing other longer-term trends in the economy having increasing impacts on insurance. The oft-discussed troika of “Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance” concerns (ESG) are coming to the fore and will likely feature more heavily in approaches to underwriting. We are already seeing this where some insurers and reinsurers are declining to take on new hydrocarbon business: State legislatures in oil and gas states are less than impressed. AI, machine learning and increased automation will also continue to decouple the person from the process when it comes to underwriting and quoting coverage. This will mean potential expense savings for insurers, but will they pass these on to customers? And what impact will robo-underwriting have on the quality of the product that has been driven by the expertise of actual people since the early days at Lloyds’ Coffee House?

What can individual operators and companies do to offset this? Well as the old saw has it, quality will out. A good risk will still be attractive to insurers, even in a time of retrenchment. Making sure you are paying attention to the details like vessel or yard housekeeping, working on culture, making your safety management systems a living process, investing in maintenance and training, being responsive to loss control recommendations and working with your insurance agent to both present your business in its best light and to understand how insurance functions as a tool will put you in the best position to weather the storm. Hard markets are no fun for anyone, but a proactive and prepared business can avoid most of the issues they cause.

By Dan Bookham
For October 2022 WorkBoat Magazine

You cannot escape the headlines: Almost everything is getting more expensive. Supply chain issues, increased demand, workforce shortages and other pressures are driving inflation at a sharp clip, and every industry is affected. And while an uptick in prices might be a boost to one’s top line profits, there’s obviously a negative impact on the cost of doing business. Insurance is not immune to inflationary pressures either, and most insurance and reinsurance companies continue to look warily at the cost of materials, the time it takes to replace or rebuild property, legal expenses and other factors as they review their books of business. The indications are that American businesses have a large (and self-inflicted) underinsurance headache.

Think about your own operations. How much money would you need to replace a string of damaged or destroyed barges? To repair or replace systems or deck machinery on a tug? To build a new ferry? To bring in replacement containers, reefer points or gensets? To source and replace a dock crane, a warehouse, or even something as basic as bollards? Is the insurance limit you have in place going to cut it?

Additionally, scarcity of materials, labor shortages and transportation & logistics problems have lengthened the time needed to repair or replace damaged property. Under these conditions, it might take two to three times as long to rebuild and reequip a facility or vessel than it took prior to the pandemic. Think about your key assets. How quickly can you get the replacement part or unit from the factory to your facility? How congested is the shipyard orderbook or the construction pipeline in your state? Do you have the relationships that could help you bump your project to the top of the list, or do you have to resign yourself to waiting in line? And at the end of the day, have you factored that into your business income insurance limit?

With all of this in mind, if you aren’t talking to your insurance agent about the ongoing inflation in construction and materials costs and longer time horizons on projects you could well find yourself underinsured. The point of your policy is to protect your assets and make you whole in the event of a loss. Proper valuations of the cost to replace or rebuild your assets (including your lost income resulting from a loss) are at the core of making sure your insurance is working for you.

By Dan Bookham for WorkBoat magazine, August 2022

After being an avid reader of Workboat for many years it’s my distinct honor to be joining my colleague Chris Richmond as a contributor to the monthly “Insurance Watch” column. For my first go around I figured it makes sense to start with revisiting a basic topic: How to read your insurance policy.

Once you get past various legal notices, billing options and marketing messages, insurance policies have five parts: Declarations, insuring agreements, conditions, exclusions and endorsements. The smart mariner will take the time to review each of these in order, as they define the rights and responsibilities that come with the coverage you purchase.

Declarations. This is the what, where, when, by whom and for whom, price and coverage period of the policy. Check to make sure the named insureds are correct, any lenders are shown and that the right coverage lines are in place.

Insuring agreements. These explain the coverage you’ve bought in detail. An “open perils” policy covers everything except those areas covered in the exclusions (more on that below) while a “named perils” policy is for a list of specific things. Depending on the appetite of the insurer, certain additional perils can be agreed to and listed, usually by endorsement (again, more on this below).

Conditions. The insurer uses this section to outline what you must do to collaborate with them and in turn what they will do to help you get paid or to defend you in the event of a loss. This section also lays out how to file a claim. Pay close attention to the conditions, ideally before you are scrambling to file a claim, as following the ‘rules of the road’ in the policy will expedite claims handling and ordinarily lead to a smoother resolution of any call on your insurance coverage.

Exclusions. While the word itself fits certain stereotypes of insurance, this section is actually driven by logic and common sense. You can’t deliberately sink your boat or burn your warehouse and expect to get paid, and you can’t expect your Hull and P& I coverage to respond to an automobile accident. Exclusions exist to ensure your policy remains affordable, that it covers reasonable risks associated with the appropriate operations and that exposures outside the realm of insurability aren’t subject to your policy.

Endorsements. These can be used to expand or limit coverage, either at your request or at the discretion of the insurance company. Because a policy is a contract these serve as customized amendments that allow the coverage you buy provide a better fit to your unique operations. Here’s where your agent can really earn their salt and why working with agents or brokers with marine experience can make a real difference in the coverage you call on when the chips are down.

By Chris Richmond
For July 2022 WorkBoat Magazine.

Chris Richmond, CIC, AAI, CMIP

Whether you are interested in purchasing a new vessel or have owned the same boat for years chances are at some point you will need a marine survey. Depending on the circumstances and who is requesting the document the survey you receive can vary greatly.

In terms of insurance, when purchasing a new vessel you will almost always need a survey in order to get an underwriter to provide you with coverage. And don’t try to use the seller’s pre-listing survey, because the underwriter most likely will not accept it. The surveyor is working for the party paying him or her  to perform inspection, and underwriters want that surveyor to be working for the client who is purchasing the boat. That is why a pre-purchase survey is in your best interest.

Also known as a condition and value survey, this will be more comprehensive and the surveyor will have your best interests and concerns in mind. You do not want surprises after you have purchased the boat and a condition and value survey will provide more detail on equipment, amenities and will provide a list of recommendations of areas that need to be addressed.

Generally, insurance companies will accept a survey that is within two years old. One thing that companies always ask is if the survey recommendations have been completed. Outstanding recs are not always a show stopper, however. Depending on the severity of the recs you may be able to delay addressing them for a while. If you do have some that are significant and could affect the safety of the vessel, see if the underwriter will still provide coverage but no navigation. You can then have insurance on your vessel while she is laid up and problems are being addressed.

Should you have an accident and the insurance company gets involved, then the adjustor will most likely request a damage survey. The surveyor becomes the eyes and ears for the insurance company and is  tasked with assessing the extent of damage to the vessel and attempting to determine what happened and why. This becomes very important when the adjuster decides on the payout of the claim – because the surveyor will assist in determining if the claim is covered or not.

A fit for trip survey can be requested by an underwriter to determine if a vessel is sound enough to make a voyage from one port to another. We had a client who was in the midst of a refit. The vessel needed to travel to another yard in a neighboring state to complete the job. The underwriter wanted some reassurance that the boat was capable of making the trip, hence the call for this type of survey.

The survey is one of the most important documents that an underwriter will review for your boat. If the insurance company requests and pays for the survey,  don’t expect to see the complete document. The company owns the survey and most likely will not give it to you. This can save you some money in the short run but if you want to shop your boat to other markets you will need to pay for a new survey. If you have a surveyor you like, stick with him or her. He or she will be familiar with your vessel and will be more efficient in future surveys, saving you money. And finally, have a conversation with your surveyor before they step on board your boat to make sure you are both on the same page with what you are asking them to report on because you don’t want any surprises after they are done.