The Shipowners’ Club has significantly boosted its financial reserves after a profitable 2020, despite the problems raised by the pandemic.
The protection and indemnity mutual, which specialises in smaller tonnage, said that its free reserves had risen to $379.1m at the end of 2020, compared with $340m at the end of the previous year.
Much of the gains are attributable to another profitable year of investment returns. The Shipowners’ Club earned an investment return of $49.8m in 2020, following another bumper return of $48.8m in the previous year.
The London-based insurer significantly improved its underwriting deficit from $10.3m in 2019 to a $2m deficit in 2020. Last year, it increased premium by $7.2m and its membership increased from 7,886 to 8,182. In gross tonnage terms its membership grew from 27m gt to 27.8m gt.
Never forget
Despite the positive figures executives said that 2020 had been a “very challenging year,” because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We must never forget the difficult chapter that 2020 presented in the lives of our members, their brokers and across our club branches, as each adapted to a new way of working,” chief executive Simon Swallow said.
“We again witnessed tremendous retention statistics as well as new members joining the club.”
He said the club's risk spreading has never been stronger.
Chairman Philip Orme said: “We have had to adapt to an extraordinary working culture, alien to a club which has been built on strong personal and face-to-face relationships with members, brokers, correspondents, reinsurers and all other stakeholders.”
