Insure-my-boat.com

Ian h

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Have been recommended giving these people a call about insuring my boat,

What is the forums thoughts?
Boat will be dry stacked and in use all year round
is there any glaring omissions ?

http://www.insure-my-boat.com

Any good or bad stories ?

Thanks in advance
 
I insured my RS43 with them this year. They were by far the cheapest and I couldn't see any shortcomings in the policy but I guess i'll only be able to make a judgment if I make a claim.
 
This is DeNovo. As explained previously, this policy contains a lot of important exceptions that you don't find in plenty of other policies. Just as a starter, read clause 6.1.1 and decide whether you're happy with that one. Caveat emptor.

I've pointed out DeNovo policy shortcomings on here a while ago, and one of their guys came up to me in a pub in Canary Wharf one evening, when London Boat Show was on. To summarise a colourful conversation he told me he didn't approve of my negative comment on his policies and I gave him a piece of my mind too (more dealing with freedom of speech than the technicalities of insurance contracts). All very colourful. We then had a beer :D:D.
 
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I’m with insure4boats

https://www.insure4boats.co.uk

Very good price and let you pay monthly 0% too

JFM....... have I cocked up :)

It's always worth being extra careful when an insurer brags about how cheap their premium is not how wide their cover is. When you're at risk of being caught out in rain wearing a nice suit you can always save yourself money by buying a really small umbrella. If you want.

I had to smile on seeing that their policy covers boats up to 50 foot, and the picture shows a princess 67.

Anyway, in short, the cover is plenty narrower than others on the market, so I wouldn't buy this policy. Consider this:
(i) you have a workman fixing your boat, and negligently you leave a rope for him to trip over and a hatch open, and he falls in and breaks his back, and sues you.
(ii) You're selling your boat and a friendly broker comes for the sea-trial but you make a small handling/mooring error and he slips between the boat and the quay, with bad injuries, and he sues you.

This insurance policy has £3m or whatever of 3rd party liability coverage, but excludes "Your legal liabilities to... anyone operating or working upon the Vessel who is an employee ... of a shipyard, ... brokerage, ...or any other similar organisation". Why on earth anyone would buy such a policy is completely beyond me, when others (eg Y Insurance) don't have this sort of exclusion.

This is just one failing (imho) of this policy. There are others imho.
 
Just to be clear, that clause is merely one of many clauses that I would not accept, when there is much better coverage on offer in the market

Many thanks John,

I have asked Y insurance for a quote and to have look at their policy
 
I would have thought that all insurers would offer the same level of cover if they want to remain competitive in an already tough market, with information on forums like this available to anyone it's not exactly easy to compete when you're offering a lesser policy than others
 
Insurers very widely from one to another. I recall when Motor insurers A Plan first started offering specialist policies to under 21's and banned drivers from their first office. They went on to offer many types of other insurance and themselves now offer marine. Their policies enabled persons to drive legally and not a whole lot more. There have been many posts here on advice and experience with a number of well known companies and policy holders whom have dealt with claims first hand. For sure you more often get what you pay for. For my six pence worth Coleman, Towergate and GJW are pretty good companies with a wide range of policies and years of satisfied policy holders.
My last was Pantanius. To cover all equipment and risks the annual policy was £20,000. Twenty times the cost of my first boat! It was worth every penny.
 
...Coleman, Towergate and GJW are pretty good companies with a wide range of policies and years of satisfied policy holders...
Each to their own but the two cases where I pursued insurers for members of this forum and eventually won after a long battle including for one of them an upper level ombudsman appeal and drafting the high court papers were Coleman/Towergate. Both eventually paid but it was a scary fight for the two policy holders. One of the battles was very long because the insurer could see I was right but chose to use "grind them down" tactics.
In contrast, GJW play fair from what I have seen. Problem is they have, or had till recently, an awful clause in their policy. There was a recent thread and someone said they were getting rid of that clause (I had previously corresponded with someone in their organisation privately about it) and if they have done that then they belong on the good-guys list imho. I haven't checked whether they have done it.

I was a pantaenius customer for >10 years and liked their policy, and put them in the same bucket as GJW ie a pleasant team and a company with lots of integrity, but they changed their policy in a complete re-write a few years ago and made it much worse imho, so I dropped them. We corresponded at length and they realised the shortcomings and cured nearly all of them, but I don't know as of today whether they cured the final one or two outstanding points. I currently insure with Y who have a good policy (with a small tweak that they will agree for a larger boat, qv) and again they are a very pleasant team to deal with and have integrity I believe.
 
I would have thought that all insurers would offer the same level of cover if they want to remain competitive in an already tough market, with information on forums like this available to anyone it's not exactly easy to compete when you're offering a lesser policy than others
You'd think that but the facts are different. Insurance is sticky in that most customers just renew. Most customers don't read the policy and because they never have a total loss or big claim they will never need to. The regulator's insistence on a "key facts" document at the front of every policy has done the public a great disservice imho because it makes it even less likely that people will read the actual contract, and imho the key facts doc doesn't tell you what you need to know because the devil tends to be in the detail. Then of course people choose the policy with a low price, which is as I say like buying the cheapest umbrella without checking its diameter. It's an odd market.
 
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It's also the case that one size doesn't fit all, of course. As an example, the insurer's control over replacement (per 6.1.1 in the linked policy) is likely to be more acceptable if the vessel is a relatively low-value generic runabout than a two-comma, custom build.

I would be interesting to see a graphical representation of the relative efforts invested by insurers to guard their liabilities versus that put in by insurance purchasers to protect their assets in the event of a catastrophic event.
 
I currently insure with Y who have a good policy (with a small tweak that they will agree for a larger boat, qv) and again they are a very pleasant team to deal with and have integrity I believe.

They're happy to make the tweak for smaller boats too. I have had a few administrative dealings with them and found them extremely responsive and helpful so no complaints from me so far. Their premium was no dearer than the others either.
 
It's also the case that one size doesn't fit all, of course. As an example, the insurer's control over replacement (per 6.1.1 in the linked policy) is likely to be more acceptable if the vessel is a relatively low-value generic runabout than a two-comma, custom build.
I generally agree BJB and I approach this from a position closer to the second of your two examples so my comments should be read in that light. Also, when you talk of "value", what matters is probably value compared with the insured's ability to absorb the loss rather than value relative to the boat market generally. But as regards one size fitting all, some insurers bury sneaky wording and then the customer isn't getting the size he/she thinks he's getting, which is of course a different point. As you know, with marine insurance (unlike other insurances) it can be lawful to contract for an agreed value in the event of total loss. Premia are generally calculated off this number. Pantaenius and Y then offer a policy that does what it says on the tin: they pay agreed value if the yacht is lost. Others (like DeNovo that OP linked to and GJW at least until recently) appear to offer agreed value when you turn most of the pages but then they insert 6.1.1 giving them an express right to get a merely similar 2nd hand boat of inferior spec and thrust it upon you in the event of a total loss. IF the customer is aware of that then fine - its not one size fits all as you say. If the customer doesn't realise that little devil is in there then it's useful to point it out. In a perfect world everyone reads the policy but of course in this day and age people do take things for granted (which is fine - I don't think I read the licence every time I update my iPhone, for example).


I would be interesting to see a graphical representation of the relative efforts invested by insurers to guard their liabilities versus that put in by insurance purchasers to protect their assets in the event of a catastrophic event.
. Yes indeed! The graph would be more useful though if each insured person knew what the insurer did and did not cover. If one were forced to buy insurance with the limited 3rd party cover mentioned above, and knew about it, one would probably insist that brokers and VolvoPauls sign disclaimers before setting foot on the passrelle!
 
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Hi all,
What age does the boat have to be for y to want a survey done ? I have heard that since Knox has changed to amlin they are now wanting boats at 25 year old surveying ?
 
I've been using Hayes Parsons in Bristol for the last 10 years and they have always been very helpful.

Apparently they are independent so have access to the whole market
 
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