Y Insurance sold to Topsail

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markc

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I just received this email from Y Yacht Insurance - the info may be useful..


For personal reasons indirectly associated to my age I have decided to sell Y Yacht Insurance and Y Yacht Assurances France. The essential factor in selecting a purchaser has been to preserve and possibly even improve the service provided by the businesses I am proud to have created.

It will soon become public knowledge that the number of Insurers prepared to underwrite yachts has reduced dramatically. MS Amlin, previously Amlin, who we have supported exclusively for nine years, have sold the part of their organisation from whom our Binding Authority has been annually issued and it will not be renewed next year.

As a result of the above, Topsail Insurance Ltd., a well established marine insurance specialist since 1996, have purchased my companies, but it will be "business as usual" for Y Yacht Insurance and Y Yacht Assurance France customers under the new ownership. The Topsail shareholders have been complemented by two former senior MS Amlin managers, Ric De Cristofano and Nigel Hawkes.

I have successfully and happily worked with both Ric and Nigel for many years and our underwriting opinions are very similar. Furthermore, Topsail’s excellent connections with international underwriters will be essential in the future.

Most of you will have dealt with Claire Froggatt, who has been my second in command for nine years. I am pleased to confirm that she will be joining the Topsail team, along with Helen Webster and they will ensure a smooth transition.

I sincerely apologise for not informing you about this development earlier but the secrecy has been essential as a result of a signed "Non Disclosure Agreement."

I will miss you all but am confident that the service we have given will be enthusiastically continued thereby deserving your loyalty.

With very best wishes,

Barrie Sullivan
 
Thanks for sharing - I haven’t received anything yet but I guess I will at some point. It will be interesting to see if the level of cover and cost remain competitive.
 
I've been living in France for 6 years and insuring my boats with Y (UK) ..... first time I've heard of 'Y Yacht Assurance France.' After about 3 years here they decided to tell me I didn't have the legal coverage I assumed I was paying for and hadn't been covered for previous years! Boat OK but not legal coverage. I'll be interested to know if the France policy is the same as UK or maybe look at other French insurers? ... "Trust me I'm an insurance broker" eh?
 
This news is very timely.
On my to do list today was to pay my Y insurance premium. I will now have some checking up to do.
And I haven’t received this email:unsure:

Where's jfm when you need him!
 
longjohnsilver said:
This news is very timely.
On my to do list today was to pay my Y insurance premium. I will now have some checking up to do.
And I haven’t received this email:unsure:

Where's jfm when you need him!
Click to expand...
Please let us know your findings.
I agree, it would be useful to hear what JFM thinks about this move.
I assume that the insurance terms will be the same.
 
No doubt a lot of you will have received the following:

For personal reasons indirectly associated to my age I have decided to sell Y Yacht Insurance and Y Yacht Assurances France. The essential factor in selecting a purchaser has been to preserve and possibly even improve the service provided by the businesses I am proud to have created.

It will soon become public knowledge that the number of Insurers prepared to underwrite yachts has reduced dramatically. MS Amlin, previously Amlin, who we have supported exclusively for nine years, have sold the part of their organisation from whom our Binding Authority has been annually issued and it will not be renewed next year.

As a result of the above, Topsail Insurance Ltd., a well established marine insurance specialist since 1996, have purchased my companies, but it will be "business as usual" for Y Yacht Insurance and Y Yacht Assurance France customers under the new ownership. The Topsail shareholders have been complemented by two former senior MS Amlin managers, Ric De Cristofano and Nigel Hawkes.

I have successfully and happily worked with both Ric and Nigel for many years and our underwriting opinions are very similar. Furthermore, Topsail’s excellent connections with international underwriters will be essential in the future.

Most of you will have dealt with Claire Froggatt, who has been my second in command for nine years. I am pleased to confirm that she will be joining the Topsail team, along with Helen Webster and they will ensure a smooth transition.

I sincerely apologise for not informing you about this development earlier but the secrecy has been essential as a result of a signed "Non Disclosure Agreement."

I will miss you all but am confident that the service we have given will be enthusiastically continued thereby deserving your loyalty.

With very best wishes,

Barrie Sullivan
Click to expand...
 
I got one of those mails, curious to know why as I am not aware of ever being a customer! Not that I am complaining, useful information.
 
I've received this email also. Quite annoying as I renewed with them last month! I nearly went with CraftInsure as they seemed a bit more competitive on premium (we all know Y have had big premium increases), CraftInsure use Navigators and General whose policy wording I liked. Something I noticed when getting quotes is that there are some marine insurers who are specifying that in the case if a total loss the pay out will be the assessed value of the craft at the time up to the insured value, not the insured value on the policy. Buyer beware!
 
MystereMarcus said:
Something I noticed when getting quotes is that there are some marine insurers who are specifying that in the case if a total loss the pay out will be the assessed value of the craft at the time up to the insured value, not the insured value on the policy. Buyer beware!
Click to expand...
Just for the record.
I specifically checked this with Y this year when I renewed.
And they confirmed that full policy value would be paid out in the event of a total loss.
 
Hurricane said:
Just for the record.
I specifically checked this with Y this year when I renewed.
And they confirmed that full policy value would be paid out in the event of a total loss.
Click to expand...
I should have made it clearer that Y wasn't one of the companies that wouldn't pay the insured value (Y's policy wording is still one of the best I found). In fact most of the top companies will pay in full, it seems to be companies offering cheaper premiums (not surprisingly).
 
Hurricane said:
Please let us know your findings.
I agree, it would be useful to hear what JFM thinks about this move.
I assume that the insurance terms will be the same.
Click to expand...
After a few phone calls and emails, this is where I’m at with this.

I contacted Topsail to get a comparative quote. They would not do this over the phone and directed me to their website to input my details, which I didn’t find particularly user friendly. I was told this would give me an immediate quote. It didn’t as it did not recognise DeFever as a make of boat (neither was Nordhavn recognised!). Not particularly impressive so far. And no email to say they’d be in touch.
However, 6 hours later I did have an email with their quote, which on a like for like basis was about 60% higher than Y!! I haven’t seen their policy conditions, but on the basis of Y being recognised as about the best, I can’t see Topsail is likely to offer better cover for the 60%higher premium. It seems to me that if I use Y for this year, my next years renewal is likely to see a huge increase based on the different between Y and Topsail now, and Y not being in existence next year.
I made a few more enquiries elsewhere, and Curtis Marine in Plymouth have come up with a quote for Navigators and General which is less than 50% of the Topsail quote, and about 20% cheaper than Y. I haven’t yet had chance to do a policy comparison, hopefully I’ll do that tomorrow.
My conclusion is that Topsail look expensive now, and I can’t see that changing next year, so my instinct is to move elsewhere now, but I will make my decision tomorrow after doing the policy comparison. The premiums for Y have increased substantially over the past few years (I haven’t made any claims in over 30 years), and in an email to Y just last week, I told them that if this continued next year I would be looking elsewhere. It seems that this sale of Y means I have brought this forward by a year.
As I’ve been typing this, I have received the email from Y about the sale of the company.

if anyone has anything else to add about either Navigators and General or Topsail, I’d be interested to read it.
 
From topsails facebook page,

I have been with Topsail on many trips having made what would now seem the unwise decision to take them at face value. It is shocking to realise that when you most need the insurance paid for in good faith, it turns out to be an expensive fake. Such a kick in the guts at the worst of times.
As well the claims process is pages and pages of old fashioned PDFs that are clunky in online systems. And once you’ve lost several days dealing with that it goes into the black hole and you wait. No help is provided at any stage. No personal phone call. No clarifications sought. It’s a very poor consumer unfriendly process.
So unless you are an experienced insurance litigator and know precisely in what terms to frame and describe the claim, you are already at a disadvantage. Even then, it’s clear their insurance assessors and legal advisors are not operating in the consumer’s interest and have way more resources and time to run semantic arguments of dubious ethical quality.
I’ve had good and not so good interactions with insurance companies and assessors over the years. From go to woe, this has been the worst. I should have heard the alarm bells way back when taking out the policy and had to call Topsail more than half a dozen times just to get someone to process my payment. I do now.
 
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