Peter_Ayres
New Member
Third Party is the answer
Most insurance companies will ask for surveys after 20 years, it's actually a standard of most of the big insurers. I'm a web developer by trade and actually built the insurance website for www.merciamarine.co.uk developing all the quotation engine 'out of tolerance' algorithms. Comprehensive insurance + over 20 years = in-house referral every time!!! At their discretion yes, but most likely a request for a survey will be the response thereafter.
Surveys can be helpful though if you've never had one as it may show up something in the early stages you can fix before a wider problem, but nevertheless they are inevitable expensive and potentially inconvenient (depending on where your boat is moored and the nearest dry dock is).
What I would say is that Mercia are an honourable company and pride themselves on providing decent quality insurance/ good service, but nevertheless like many others they won't take undue risks (to many bad risks and they themselves run the risk of losing their underwriting license).
Here's my suggestion if you don't want to do the survey... if your boat is not worth a huge amount, you know it's in good shape and you're a competent helmsman the answer is simple... third party boat insurance
! You'll save quite a lot of money (just compare prices here... http://www.merciamarine.co.uk/compare_boat_insurance.aspx ...again a page I built myself 
), not a single boat insurance category for Mercia will dictate a survey if you buy third party, no matter how old the boat that I guarantee... I built the algorithms!!
Most insurance companies will ask for surveys after 20 years, it's actually a standard of most of the big insurers. I'm a web developer by trade and actually built the insurance website for www.merciamarine.co.uk developing all the quotation engine 'out of tolerance' algorithms. Comprehensive insurance + over 20 years = in-house referral every time!!! At their discretion yes, but most likely a request for a survey will be the response thereafter.
Surveys can be helpful though if you've never had one as it may show up something in the early stages you can fix before a wider problem, but nevertheless they are inevitable expensive and potentially inconvenient (depending on where your boat is moored and the nearest dry dock is).
What I would say is that Mercia are an honourable company and pride themselves on providing decent quality insurance/ good service, but nevertheless like many others they won't take undue risks (to many bad risks and they themselves run the risk of losing their underwriting license).
Here's my suggestion if you don't want to do the survey... if your boat is not worth a huge amount, you know it's in good shape and you're a competent helmsman the answer is simple... third party boat insurance
! You'll save quite a lot of money (just compare prices here... http://www.merciamarine.co.uk/compare_boat_insurance.aspx ...again a page I built myself ), not a single boat insurance category for Mercia will dictate a survey if you buy third party, no matter how old the boat that I guarantee... I built the algorithms!!