In a time where uncertainty is overwhelming our society, Yacht Insurance market leaders CompareYachtInsurance.com have further enhanced their offering to simplify the purchasing of yacht insurance to their clients by increasing the markets they have access to. We sit down with Bryan Davies, Managing Director of CompareYachtInsurance.com, to hear how he has shaped the market over the past years and is looking for further disruption to the status quo.
“We’ve come a long way from starting up in 2017, but it’s important to know that the principles and morals which we’ve founded the service on have not changed. We provide yacht owners with an impartial access to as many as 12 insurers on our panel, challenging the insurers to provide their best possible premiums and terms for the client.”
On asking how CompareYachtInsurance.com differentiates themselves from a conventional yacht insurance broker or managing general agent, Davies added, “What makes us unique is our access to the market. We are not tied in to working with just one or two insurers and we have no interest in advocating for one insurer over another. What you get is a fair marketplace where yacht insurance providers will give you the details of their quote, and you are able to decide for yourself which one you want to go for on a balance of premiums, excesses and cover available”. This means that CompareYachtInsurance won’t push you in the direction of the insurer that pays the most commission, Davies said “We are a free online service that does not provide the insurance policy itself and aren’t a broker. We always want what is best for the client, who gets the quotes in their inbox and then only hears back from us a few months down the line asking how it all went”.
Whilst we have seen an increasingly hardening market for yacht and marine insurers over the past few years, driven by a crackdown from Lloyds of London to make marine insurance books of business more profitable, we can’t help to question why CompareYachtInsurance.com has seen such consistent growth over the past few years.
“Our growth really is a testament to the changing landscape of how a yacht owner wants to buy insurance. The days of speaking to a broker over the phone or in person are over, and the industry has had to transition to an online marketplace. We want all of our clients to benefit from the simplicity in what we’ve set up, which we can only summarise as a seamless and quick process to obtain your quotes, knowing that a handful of them will be sat in your inbox for you to peruse and choose from in the near future. The last thing anyone wants is someone on the phone pressuring them into taking out a policy that they’ve not had the time to properly look into.”
The number of insurers available may only be one area of change recently to the CompareYachtInsurance.com service, so we were interested in finding out more about how the actual policies have changed for clients.
“What’s on offer from insurers has never been more broad than what is on offer at the moment”, Davies adds. Insurers have had to make big changes in the last few years to accommodate large individual losses or catastrophe losses such as the hurricanes in the USA, Bahamas and Caribbean and windstorms in the Mediterranean. It is understandable that insurers have had to increase their premiums to cover these losses, as many insurers were on the brink of pulling out of the market altogether. We now think that premium increases have slowed again, and in their place the focus of insurers has changed to working with yacht owners on a one to one basis to ensure they are as well prepared to avoid and mitigate against potential losses in the future. The level of details in hurricane plans has increased exponentially, along with stringent requirements on qualifications and experience before navigating yachts has already proven popular across the market.
We go on to find out more about the changes which lay ahead for the yacht insurance market, and what owners can expect in the next few years. Davies tells us “There’s a lot to have on your radar if you want a big picture of the changes to come. We’ve got European and British yacht owners who have to think about Brexit implications, which isn’t made easier with their insurers having their own red tapes to cut through to be able to offer policies across the English Channel. We are also looking at a transformation to a better digital age. Most yachts are packed with electronics and data that can be better used by insurers. We believe that the next big change to affect clients is a more quantitative approach to pricing of premiums. This will be brought around by the major insurers collaborating to share their premium and claims data with one another to get an accurate overview of the individual risk of each yacht having a loss or claim. This data will not only help insurers in pricing their premiums, but will also have a trickle on effect of pushing manufacturers and equipment suppliers to develop their products to a common high standard.”
“Ultimately, we are here for our clients and will continue to offer a great free service for the years to come no matter what industry or worldwide hurdles are thrown in the way of yacht owners.” Davies finishes off with “If there is a message we can get out to yacht owners, it would be to try our service and let us pleasantly surprise you on how much time and effort we can save you every year when finding your perfect yacht insurance policy – and let us know how you get on, we love hearing feedback from our clients.”
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