Sydney, Australia (CU)_ Marine Skippers Insurance was introduced in Australia for the first time. Under the new program, maritime captains will get their own insurance coverage. Marine Skippers Insurance is finally available to Australian customers after 18 months of efforts to gain capacity with Lloyd’s of London. According to Newcastle based Nicholas Bedggood, director of sales and distribution for the product, “This is a standalone liability product for delivery and commercial skippers when they are in charge of vessels they do not own”.
According to Bedggood’s estimation, Australia has around 12,000 to 15,000 active commercial skippers. He anticipates that many will be involved in the program. He said, “There are thousands of skippers that will buy this product now”. Bedggood referred to a multitude of vessel movements throughout the coastline where boat and ship operators may benefit from the coverage. According to him, possible clients are captains of party boats and charter fleets, as well as those that transport vessels between ports or sail yachts to regattas.
According to Bedggood, marine captains were uninsured and were often held financially responsible for any damage to the vessels they commanded which is a process known as subrogation. Bedggood said, “There have been a couple of events in Australia where there was some limited damage of thirty or forty grand and the hull insurer has paid it out to the owner and to the repair and then they’ve sought to recover their damages directly to the skipper”.
According to him, this was the primary reason he and Dean Bowen, director of operations and placement at Marine Skippers Insurance in Sydney, designed the product. According to Bowen, acquiring capacity via Lloyd’s of London was a huge difficulty. Now that the coverage is in place, he added that the website is now complete, and the product may be released.
