The Insurer – Page 4
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Ports and terminals attract the eye
As we head into the insurance renewal season, it is easier to spot the areas where market players have decided on pushing out a new boat or two. For some reason, the field of ports and terminals has emerged in 2006 as an area some people want to expand into ...
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North Korean insurance blues
Very recent news from North Korea leads this correspondent to suppose that very soon the country''s shipping industry will come under further scrutiny and restrictions. To some extent the precedents have already given observers a flavour of things to come. And insurance will probably feature.
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NewsMaking molehills out of mountains in China
The growth of port and terminal infrastructure in China proceeds apace. If you go to the deep water port of Yangshan, just outside Shanghai, there is a facility whose planners are already thinking big.The first phase is designed to cope with 2m teu and work on phase 2 has begun.This ...
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Cold shoulder for energy risks
Insurance is regularly about classes of business. Marine insurance and energy insurance are often to be found along the same corridor in firms, but they do not readily mix and they exhibit different propensities. The division is especially visible in an area like port insurance. Port insurers and reinsurers are ...
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Is big better?
Between now and 2010, the container world will be largely augmented by massive ships according to the analyst Drewry. Between now and the end of this decade there are two ships on order designed to carry less than 500 teu. They will join an existing fleet of 138 ships this ...
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Scale Returns
Since last reporting, your columnist has been to Colombo, to take part in a Conference organized by Ceylon Association of Ship Agents (CASA) and to hear the news of this island which always seems to perching on the brink of something much better. The shipping industry in Sri Lanka is ...
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TT Club weathers market volatility
This is the time of year when many insurers report their results. The TT Club, which nowadays can be considered as the market leading specialist insurer for the ports and terminals sector, reports very fair results for 2005 and indeed says that the loss ratio for the year has been ...
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A question of commissions
The question of commissions in insurance is sensitive, in relation to the amounts which are paid to brokers. Insurance brokers for ports and terminals are specialists. They can earn as much as 20% of the premium paid, especially if there is a chain of intermediaries involved.
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So farewell then, P&O Ports
At first P& O Ports was hardly a group of ports at all, more a higeldy-pigeldy collection of Australian and English Channel terminal operations acquired over the years during the early phases of containerisation.
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Pains of Quarantine
The case of the quarantine station in Essex which took delivery of shipments of birds from Taiwan and Surinam recently, allegedly infected with Avian Flu, has been well reported in the UK press.
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The Insurance Cost of Katrina
The Atlantic storm season this year has been very disheartening for port insurers. In a competitive market they have quoted keen rates, taken on exposed realty and equipment and laid off diligently to catastrophe insurers.
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Soft times a-coming
All of sudden, if you are a port operator or a port authority, the international insurance market located in London has the welcome mat out for you. In addition to the TT Club, there are market segmenters at work aiming at different parts of the whole. If you are a ...
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NewsImprovisation Hong Kong style
When the new Singaporean owners come to work to their recently acquired operation in Hong Kong, what will they notice that is different? Anything at all on the risk front?
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A shipyard in your backyard?
Some insurance issues have arisen in connection with the risk of terrorism and the ISPS Code which give us all pause for concern. A ship under construction is clearly a marine risk and subject to the Marine Insurance Act.
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The Tesco Effect
Last week it was announced in the UK that the supermarket chain called Tesco was claiming one pound in every eight spent in the UK retail market. The effects on surrounding shops in the traditional high street can be easily imagined.
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Imbalance of trade
The imbalance of visible trade which currently exists between China and the mature economies is growing into a feature of our times, one of the memorials to which are the lengthening queues of hauliers outside box terminals in places as far apart as Southampton and Long Beach.
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Tsunami update
In the immediate aftermath of the events on 26th December last year, the maritime sector as a whole seemed to have escaped rather lightly in the tragic circumstances. Only Chennai in India and Galle in Sri Lanka had serious damage to report, and then, in the scale of things, nothing ...
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NewsSupreme Court extends liability limitation inland
A recent case involving the Norfolk Southern Railway and no less than the US Supreme Court has struck a blow in favour of the maritime way - thereby benefiting terminal operators - by ruling on the validity of a Himalaya Clause for an inland carrier. Here an Australian manufacturer shipped ...
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Neglecting a joined-up strategy
The high rates of port expansion currently written about the ports of China during these boom years prompts people to think: why shouldn''t one of the new dragons supplant North East Asia''s traditional hub port Busan. That fine location, which resembles Hong Kong in certain respects in that it is ...
