Heads-up. Craftinsure anchoring exclusion

[Nigelpickin]

The website for "Y" insurance is very off putting - it looks like something a couple of volunteers from the local sailing club have lashed together.
Six tweets in 7 years doesn't suggest they are in the current decade either.

Well in defense of that, they are fantastically responsive, both in terms of general queries, specific questions to their underwriters and claim passes - perhaps because they’re not sitting at their desks wired up to social media

Try emailing Claire if you need any clarification regarding their policy:
y@why.uk.com

 

[Gwylan]

Not CraftInsures week it seems.

I got caught on their recent change of terms regarding the age of the boat.

 

[jfm]

The website for "Y" insurance is very off putting - it looks like something a couple of volunteers from the local sailing club have lashed together.
Six tweets in 7 years doesn't suggest they are in the current decade either.

Insure with craftinsure then. Great website and probably great tweetery too .

 

[MapisM]

The website for "Y" insurance is very off putting - it looks like something a couple of volunteers from the local sailing club have lashed together.
Six tweets in 7 years doesn't suggest they are in the current decade either.

Well, you might find unattractive also Buzzi website, I suppose.
Otoh, they forgot more about their own world records than anyone of us will ever know.
Obviously, at Sunseeker (among others) they don't search the web, when they look for a boatbuilding partner...

 

[petem]

Well, you might find unattractive also Buzzi website, I suppose.
Otoh, they forgot more about their own world records than anyone of us will ever know.
Obviously, at Sunseeker (among others) they don't search the web, when they look for a boatbuilding partner...

Indeed, quite bizarre!

http://www.fbdesign.it/leisure-boats/item/31-buzzi-48-stab-sf

 

[BruceK]

Yes you are correct.

If it matters you might want to get a different insurer e.g. Y.

By the way, Craftinsure sell the Zurich policy. As I've written on here before with details, there are plenty of other profoundly unsatisfactory (in my opinion) clauses in that policy that would make me run a mile even before I got to the unattended anchoring clause. Just for starters, their electrolysis clause is among the worst in my opinion. Also, if you have a total loss they are not required to pay you cash equal to the insured amount and are free instead to find you a replacement boat of their choosing, which can be slightly older than, slightly smaller than, and similar rather than the same as, the one you lost. I ask you, why does anyone at all buy this policy, ever? I guess the answer might be that they don't read it. I wish them well. Do yourself a favour and vote with your feet.

As regards the comments above along the lines of "rightly so", I think those people are misunderstanding insurance. Insurance is merely a contractual transfer of risk. If I carelessly drive my car into yours, totally my fault, then "rightly so" it starts as my problem and I need to make sure your car is repaired at no charge to you. But if I choose to pay a premium to an insurer to lay off my rightly so risk to them, then it becomes "rightly so" that the insurer pays, not me. I and the insurer should be free to make that deal if we both wish, and why would anyone call that not right?

Wow. Well I'll be the first to say it is difficult to gainsay anything you state. You are invariably right. However I can in Craftinsure's defence say that my dealings with them have been very satisfactory and a claim paid without quibble and then after the fact. (Initially I was not going to claim and undertook the expenses myself but costs kept climbing. When they reached 12k I threw in the towel and called the insurers and they covered my losses). I am sure Y is a better policy based on your expertise and I should have another look but Craftinsure has proved more than adequate and satisfactory.

 

[[2068]]

Insure with craftinsure then. Great website and probably great tweetery too .

I think my point is more that what could well be a great product with great service is hidden behind a storefront that doesn't look too good.
Maybe they have all the business they can manage with the current approach

 

[EugeneR]

I spoke with Rod at Craftinsure and he clarified that, if other boats also anchor there, it might be considered a recognised mooring. The words "exposed location" came up as a clear no-no which cover, for example, anchoring to go to The Hut for lunch.

He has asked that I send some examples and they will considering a change to my policy to cover me.

I now had a call from Clare @ Y and, while more expensive, for peace of mind will move there.

 

[petem]

Wow. Well I'll be the first to say it is difficult to gainsay anything you state. You are invariably right. However I can in Craftinsure's defence say that my dealings with them have been very satisfactory and a claim paid without quibble and then after the fact. (Initially I was not going to claim and undertook the expenses myself but costs kept climbing. When they reached 12k I threw in the towel and called the insurers and they covered my losses). I am sure Y is a better policy based on your expertise and I should have another look but Craftinsure has proved more than adequate and satisfactory.

If the claim being paid was for a "no-brainer" event then I can't see how this is an endorsement. It's all "edge case" marginal stuff that separates the good from the bad insurers.

 

[petem]

I spoke with Rod at Craftinsure and he clarified that, if other boats also anchor there, it might be considered a recognised mooring. The words "exposed location" came up as a clear no-no which cover, for example, anchoring to go to The Hut for lunch.

He has asked that I send some examples and they will considering a change to my policy to cover me.

I now had a call from Clare @ Y and, while more expensive, for peace of mind will move there.

Good move.

For Porto and others happy with the "line of sight" nonsense, consider the case where you go for lunch to a beach restaurant or pub and either you or someone in your party is taken ill and ends up in hospital. Do you REALLY want to be concerned that your boat is now uninsured?

After all, boating is supposed to be pleasurable / relaxing.....

 

[jfm]

Wow. Well I'll be the first to say it is difficult to gainsay anything you state. You are invariably right. However I can in Craftinsure's defence say that my dealings with them have been very satisfactory and a claim paid without quibble and then after the fact. (Initially I was not going to claim and undertook the expenses myself but costs kept climbing. When they reached 12k I threw in the towel and called the insurers and they covered my losses). I am sure Y is a better policy based on your expertise and I should have another look but Craftinsure has proved more than adequate and satisfactory.

Bruce I totally get that but fwiw here are my thoughts on that. For us as individuals, and also for insurers, there is a world of difference between a minor claim and total loss. Insurers generally pay small claims without quibble because they want your repeat business, they want a good name in the market, and people will write on the internet how nice they are. £12k is small in this context.

But when you make a claim that is so big it actually hurts the insurer, believe me it all changes. The only thing that will save you - or not - is the contract. The case gets handed to the insurer's legal team and all prior goodwill is consigned to history. I insured my house with Royal Sun Alliance - terribly nice and good call centre/customer services, and if a pipe bursts they will pay for fixing/redecoration £2,000 no quibble. But my whole house burned down (no-one in it, btw!) and I claimed £1.5m rebuild cost, and the RSA relationship all changed. The put their lawyers on the case, plus the world's largest loss adjuster (Crawfords, London team) and a fire forensics consultancy company. They spent 1.5 years and well over £100k in consultants fees, first trying to establish that I had burnt it down in order to claim the money (yeah right...), and second going thru small print clauses in the policy to get out of paying (they were wrong on all counts). Likewise Seahope's (poster on here) boat sank, total loss, and the insurers spent ages using the corrosion/electrolysis small print clause to not pay. And likewise again a poster (wants to be anon) on Scuttlebutt had their mast and rig fail at sea on a large yacht, and again insurers refuse to pay based the claim (I've forgotten - maybe £30k) based on small print in the contract. In all those cases the insurer ended up paying the full amount, literally without one penny of compromise by the insured, but the lifeboat for the insured person was in all three cases the wording of the contract.

For us as insured boaters, the question of whether an insurer pays out a small claim is interesting but not a truly big deal. However, suffering a total loss with no insurance pay out can be life changing. It can set somebody back years, decades, impact retirement, etc etc. The only thing you can rely on if you make a really big claim - if you believe my paragraph above - is the wording of the contract. Forgot prior good behaviour by the insurer. And, in this regard, my personal opinion is that the CraftInsure contract is a very long way from top of the class. I would never buy it and when anyone tells me that have it I suggest they switch, today!

 

[jfm]

It's all "edge case" marginal stuff that separates the good from the bad insurers.

Pete I don't fully agree that. What separates them is also the fundamental non-edge terms in the contract.

Say you buy a new boat for £1m and after 5 years it is worth £600k and sinks and you have a good insurance claim, and lets assume the insurers stick to their contracts.

With Y you get a money payout of £1m, if that is the number you have agreed to insure it for and have paid a premium based on on £1m (roughly 0.5%, iirc).

With CraftInsure you'll have paid similar premium (perhaps slightly less - I'm not sure and don't care) and they say "We're not giving you cash. We have found a 6 year old similar used boat, same model as yours but has the 525hp not 575hp engines, and the 9kva genset not 17, and only 50 hours more on the clock. Where would you like us to deliver it?"

Seriously. This is my point.

 

[Elessar]

Yes you are correct.

If it matters you might want to get a different insurer e.g. Y.

By the way, Craftinsure sell the Zurich policy. As I've written on here before with details, there are plenty of other profoundly unsatisfactory (in my opinion) clauses in that policy that would make me run a mile even before I got to the unattended anchoring clause. Just for starters, their electrolysis clause is among the worst in my opinion. Also, if you have a total loss they are not required to pay you cash equal to the insured amount and are free instead to find you a replacement boat of their choosing, which can be slightly older than, slightly smaller than, and similar rather than the same as, the one you lost. I ask you, why does anyone at all buy this policy, ever? I guess the answer might be that they don't read it. I wish them well. Do yourself a favour and vote with your feet.

As regards the comments above along the lines of "rightly so", I think those people are misunderstanding insurance. Insurance is merely a contractual transfer of risk. If I carelessly drive my car into yours, totally my fault, then "rightly so" it starts as my problem and I need to make sure your car is repaired at no charge to you. But if I choose to pay a premium to an insurer to lay off my rightly so risk to them, then it becomes "rightly so" that the insurer pays, not me. I and the insurer should be free to make that deal if we both wish, and why would anyone call that not right?

Interesting JFM. At one point you said Craftinsure had not the best wording but it was OK.
They are cheap, easy to deal with even when I added charter insurance, changed named skippers etc and treated me well when I had a claim so I have stuck with them.
Like most people I suspect, I haven't read the policy.
I will now.......

 

[petem]

Pete I don't fully agree that. What separates them is also the fundamental non-edge terms in the contract.

Sorry, that's a given for me too. I was trying to make the same point as you but you did it far more eloquently as ever!

The really interesting statistic would be the number of claims that an insurer has legitimately (due to exclusions) and illegitimately (trying it on) contested. Nobody should take any comfort out of the bread and butter claims that are low in value or straightforward.

Pete

 

[jfm]

The really interesting statistic would be the number of claims that an insurer has legitimately (due to exclusions) and illegitimately (trying it on) contested.

The best statistic I can offer is 3 out of 3 - see #31 above!

But I don't think the statistic you ask for is actually relevant. With Craftinsure, if they gave you the manky 6 year old boat instead of £1m, they would be acting perfectly correctly under the terms of their contract. They would not be trying it on. If you contract to buy a manky Reliant Robin I don't think anyone is doing anything wrong when the car dealer hands you a manky Reliant Robin. If you wanted a BMW you should have gone to the BMW shop. Craftinsure are doing nothing wrong; they're just selling Reliant Robins.

 

[jfm]

Interesting JFM. At one point you said Craftinsure had not the best wording but it was OK.
They are cheap, easy to deal with even when I added charter insurance, changed named skippers etc and treated me well when I had a claim so I have stuck with them.
Like most people I suspect, I haven't read the policy.
I will now.......

I honestly don't remember all prior discussions Mark on insurance policies - there have been so many, and they change from time to time. They're dispersed over this forum and it's impossible to find them. Apologies if I have been inconsistent.

You gotta decide what you want. If you want easy dealings when you change skippers, easy payouts on small claims then great and Craftinsure might fit the bill. Which isn't to say Y wouldn't. If like me you care mostly about payment in case of total loss or near total loss, then Craftinsure isn't the answer, in my view. If I suffer a total loss, I want to choose my next boat, not have my insurer do it.

 

[petem]

But I don't think the statistic you ask for is actually relevant. With Craftinsure, if they gave you the manky 6 year old boat instead of £1m, they would be acting perfectly correctly under the terms of their contract. They would not be trying it on. If you contract to buy a manky Reliant Robin I don't think anyone is doing anything wrong when the car dealer hands you a manky Reliant Robin. If you wanted a BMW you should have gone to the BMW shop. Craftsure are doing nothing wrong; they're just selling Reliant Robins.

Yeah, but as has been illustrated many times before, punters (our fellow forumites) don't realise that Craftinsure are selling Reliant Robins, they still think they are buying BMW's.

So when it comes to claim time they will expect £1m and Craftinsure will legitimately offer RR. And that's the statistic that I'm referring to in my post.

 

[CLB]

The best statistic I can offer is 3 out of 3 - see #31 above!

But I don't think the statistic you ask for is actually relevant. With Craftinsure, if they gave you the manky 6 year old boat instead of £1m, they would be acting perfectly correctly under the terms of their contract. They would not be trying it on. If you contract to buy a manky Reliant Robin I don't think anyone is doing anything wrong when the car dealer hands you a manky Reliant Robin. If you wanted a BMW you should have gone to the BMW shop. Craftinsure are doing nothing wrong; they're just selling Reliant Robins.

Surly they could only give you a manky old reliant robin, if you insured a manky old reliant robin, or something very similar, with them.

If you Insured a Jag, you would expect a Jag back and if the condition, miles, service history or optional extras were significantly different, I would imagine it would be a easy option to turn down, and a case to win if they persisted.

I am insured with Craft Insure, so have a genuine interest in this thread. This is the clause in my policy that I think you refer to:

In the event of total loss or constructive total loss, we will pay £My valuation or at our option, provide a replacement boat of a similar age, size and type.

Just how similar would the boat need to be. It wouldn't be difficult to prove that say, my £100k boat is being replaced with a boat worth only £70k. Boat values, unless a rare or unique boat, are quite easy to find.

Has anyone every fallen foul of this clause? Someone in Holyhead must have been insured with Craft Insure I would have thought.

 

[jfm]

Yeah, but as has been illustrated many times before, punters (our fellow forumites) don't realise that Craftinsure are selling Reliant Robins, they still think they are buying BMW's.

So when it comes to claim time they will expect £1m and Craftinsure will legitimately offer RR. And that's the statistic that I'm referring to in my post.

OK fair enough - I see your point. Alas no one has that statistic, I expect. Actually what happens when you make a small claim is that the RR dealer gives you a small BMW rather than a small RR, for goodwill, and the customer is happy. You only get the fullsize RR instead of the fullsize BMW if you suffer a total loss, which is very rare. With regard to my 3 examples in #31, the insurers tried to dodge paying by arguing the customer had bought a RR when the customer actually had bought the BMW, so it is not the statistic you're looking for.

 

[Elessar]

I honestly don't remember all prior discussions Mark on insurance policies - there have been so many, and they change from time to time. They're dispersed over this forum and it's impossible to find them. Apologies if I have been inconsistent.

You gotta decide what you want. If you want easy dealings when you change skippers, easy payouts on small claims then great and Craftinsure might fit the bill. Which isn't to say Y wouldn't. If like me you care mostly about payment in case of total loss or near total loss, then Craftinsure isn't the answer, in my view. If I suffer a total loss, I want to choose my next boat, not have my insurer do it.

I hope my comment didn't come across as a complaint in any way that wasn't the intent! No apology needed therefore

I'm glad you promoted me to read it, I should have anyway. Your knowledgeable insights are very much appreciated.