Navigators & General-Any Good?

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catalac08

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Been insured with them several years, cheap premiums but no claims. Felt re-assured in the past as they paid out ok on a friends boat which was damaged by another boat on its mooring. I am feeling a bit unsettled by negative comment about N&G in another post recently- presumably they did not pay out a claim.

Interested to hear others experiences with them, before I renew again (or by PM if preferred). The last thing any of us need is an ins co that does not pay out when required!
 
I was with them for a couple of years but I found GJW to be considerably cheaper when it came to renewal.
 
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I have been with them for many years, always found them helpful.

I have had 3 claims, all damage caused by a 3rd party. In each case they have settled promptly with me, less the excess, and then fought my corner with the 3rd party insurers and recovered the cost and repaid me the excess.

Seem like pretty good guys to me.
 
Have to say they were pretty good to me - with a previous boat they paid two claims in 3 years without a quibble. I've stayed with them as a result.
 
Ooooh! This is useful stuff. My boat insurance (currently with Admiral) expires on 31 March and I have received a quote from Nav & Gen. A bit cheaper. Not a lot, but it all helps.

Set myself the task of reading the policy doc this weekend and, assuming it compares well with the cover from Admiral, am going to take out the policy on Monday.

Useful advice chaps and very timely for me. Thx.:)
 
I had insured with Navigators & General for years but when it became time to claim on the policy, they were nothing of not extremely difficult. They employed a surveyor who managed to state that the leading edge of my wooden mast showed signs of 'fatigue cracking'. In fact they were a row of compression fractures (wood is a cellular structure and doesn't get fatigue cracking). After three more surveyors I took Navigators & General to the insurance ombudsman and won. However the entire exercise took me three years and the biggest pile of paper I've ever seen. I thought this episode entirely unnecessary and cost me three years sailing. Now I never lose an opportunity to tell the world what a helpful company I found Navigators & General.
 
catalac08 said:
Been insured with them several years, cheap premiums but no claims. Felt re-assured in the past as they paid out ok on a friends boat which was damaged by another boat on its mooring. I am feeling a bit unsettled by negative comment about N&G in another post recently- presumably they did not pay out a claim.

Interested to hear others experiences with them, before I renew again (or by PM if preferred). The last thing any of us need is an ins co that does not pay out when required!
Click to expand...

I like Navigators - easy to deal with. I also like their policy wording, especially on craft over 10 years old. The loss of rig issues can be subject to "betterment" with many insurers who will assess (arbitrarily) the expected life of the rig, and then charge you for your improved position. So a 20 year old rig may have a life of 25 years, so you will only get 5 years worth of payout - the rest you will have to pay. I asked Pantaneous what their calcs on life span were but they would give no indication. Navigators is the nearest one could describe as a new for old policy (which it is not), but at least you will get a substantial portion of your claim paid.
 
Rubbish. Navigators and General refused to pay out at all - the claim was simply and high handedly dismissed. And I can assure you that all was entirely kosher.

The only way to try and ensure that chiselling insurance companies of this ilk don't continue to try it on with decent customers is to ensure their come-uppance gains maximum exposure. When the Ombudsman episode was finally sorted out, they had the brass neck to ask if I wanted to renew with them. OF
 
We were for many years with N & G with a small commercial craft policy, with no claims.
But when we had the misfortune of losing our rudder we found that despite submitting our claim we had to wait for nearly seven weeks before a surveyor was dispatched, despite repeated requests and reminders from us. In the end the surveyor reported that the rudder loss had been caused by unseen metal fatigue and the claim was dismissed.
The fact that the claim was refused was bad enough, but what really riled me was the fact that the surveyor was not appointed immediately when at least we'd have been in a position to move on. As it was we had raced around sourcing the plans to fabricate a new rudder, getting quotes on the steelwork, glasswork etc., in an attempt to salvage something of our season to no avail.
When this was pointed out after the claim was dismissed, there was no comment made, let alone any apology, a disgraceful way to behave to a customer of many years standing. After such treatment is wasn't hard to move our business elsewhere.
 
Oooooeeeer!!

Moved my business to Nav and Gen (actually ended up taking it out with a company called Velos, who do a special deal for Dufour owners, but using Nav and Gen as the underwriter).

Having read the last couple of posts now wondering whether that was such a good move.:o

Fingers crossed, touch wood etc for an incident free year, so that I don't need to test out their claims dept!
 
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