Among the battling big beasts in the protection and indemnity jungle, there can be only one lion king. But who’s the raccoon?
In its annual ranking of P&I club performance, insurance broker Tyser has turned to the animal world for inspiration to separate the top-tier predators from the cute and cuddly.
Top spot and king of the jungle goes to Norway’s Gard after a year in which its gross premiums reached an all-time high of nearly $1.2bn.
“The bad news for the rest of the jungle is that the club has already met its targets for 2025 and is now working on an extensive strategy review, setting new goals for 2030 to be met through robust and ambitious action,” Tysers said in the report.
“The king of the jungle has little to fear from other predators and will continue to dominate.”
NorthStandard was ranked equal first with Gard last year but the “big and happy” hippo drops down to third in the rankings. Skuld, the leopard that will not change its spots, replaces it as number two in the rankings.
At the other end of the scale, the London Club, a raccoon that’s “hanging on”, has climbed one spot to 11 while the American Club takes the bottom spot with its chimpanzee “fishing for sympathy”.
The Tysers tradition has seen P&I clubs ranked as birds and high (and low) performance cars in recent years. The report provides a snapshot of an industry in a dangerous world in which sanctions, attacks on shipping and piracy have shifted the perception of risk in the past year.
The broker said the deep-seated conservatism of leading clubs makes further consolidation unlikely in the short term, despite the apparent success of the NorthStandard merger.
The broker is convinced that there is more room for deals after the NorthStandard tie-up in February 2023 added “stability” to the now 12-strong International Group of P&I Clubs, which provides third-party cover for nearly 90% of the oceangoing fleet.
Further consolidation could help the problem of recruiting and keeping qualified staff in the face of competition from other industries, it said, but the nature of club boards and management means it does not “expect any developments in the near future”.
Problems filling posts has emerged as an issue across maritime industries, including the P&I sector. Some of the International Group have diversified their portfolios outside of mutual P&I, making it an increasingly complicated business, according to Tysers.
Jonathan Andrews, chief executive of Steamship Mutual, told TradeWinds in May that the complexities demanded a larger pool of skilled employees but meant clubs were involved in a global war for talent.
Tyser said the struggle to find high-quality candidates had led to a lot of movement between the clubs, “the most striking example of which was the London Club appointment of James Bean from NorthStandard as its new CEO”.
Bean, a key player in the creation of NorthStandard, is due to start work later this year at London, where he has been charged with growing the business as an independent club.
Outgoing chief executive Ian Gooch said there were no plans for mergers — but did not rule one out at a future date.
Read more
- Eagle-eyed marine insurance broker Tysers turns to ornithology to assess P&I flock
- Ukraine fallout set to hit marine insurance markets
- West of England's fixed premium P&I business takes off
- Gard again goes for P&I gold, but some big names are struggling
- Leading P&I mutuals continue to register fixed premium growth
