Seen in Business Insurance:
Marine hull and cargo insurers are growing increasingly concerned with the availability of qualified and experienced crew, which have come under pressure from the boom in ship-borne trade and cost-conscious shipowners. [...]
Keith Auld, member of IUMI’s Cargo Committee, said: “People shipping goods are doing it on cost—the cheapest people to handle the cargo and using the cheapest ships to carry the cargo,” he said. “If we keep allowing cargoes to be handled this way, we will not continue making money,” he added.
Massimo Canepa, of Manara Canepa, Raffaela, and member of IUMI’s Loss Prevention Committee, said that underwriters were paying for the shortage of experience and knowledge among crew. “Error in crew judgment is very often just a lack of knowledge of how to respond to conditions that deviate from the norm,” he said.
Throw in plenty of capacity in the market, leading to soft pricing, and we have some disturbing trends at work….