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- [00:00]
Dorothea Ioannou
Hey Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app?
- [00:05]
Tracy Alloway
Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs.
- [00:12]
Dorothea Ioannou
That's music to my ears. I can only talk
- [00:17]
Joe Weisenthal
Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Zero Account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list of Fidelity.com commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC member NYSE SIPC you didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting sky high sales stacking champion at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today@shopify.com win
- [01:02]
Tracy Alloway
Bloomberg
- [01:02]
Joe Weisenthal
Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.
- [01:17]
Tracy Alloway
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
- [01:21]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
- [01:23]
Tracy Alloway
Joe, you know, I'm slightly obsessed with insurance. Yeah, maybe obsessed isn't the right word, but fascinated appreciative of insurers because I think there's a tendency to think of them as sort of limiting factors in the world. So, you know, if you can't get insurance in California, you can't build a house. But I also think of them as enablers of certain behaviors. Right.
- [01:44]
Joe Weisenthal
I think that's a really good way to put it. People do a lot of things that they wouldn't otherwise do were they not able to get insurance on it. So yes, it does cut in both directions. So we should appreciate the existence of the existence of insurance.
- [01:59]
Dorothea Ioannou
All right.
- [01:59]
Joe Weisenthal
Well now actually, you know what? My daughter.
- [02:02]
Tracy Alloway
Your daughter has insurance.
- [02:03]
Joe Weisenthal
She. Well, she asked me to explain insurance the other day, which I was like, you know, and then suddenly I was like, I have to explain.
- [02:09]
Tracy Alloway
Wait. First of all, tell the listeners how old your daughter is.
- [02:12]
Steve Okalukian
10.
- [02:12]
Joe Weisenthal
I was trying, I can't remember the context, exactly what it was. Maybe it's something about fire insurance, etc. But I think I, I was actually pretty proud of myself. I was basically like there are these risks that happen where like say if your house burns down, you could like ruin you financially. But it doesn't make sense to like save all that money in cash and always have that much savings available to be able to rebuild your house. And therefore, the way you solve it is by paying a small amount. I was pretty, like, happy. I think she got it.
- [02:40]
Tracy Alloway
I'm glad she's planning for home ownership at an early age. Okay, well, now is a really good time to think and appreciate insurance because as you know, we are recording this on April 8th. I feel like. Do I need to say the hour? Maybe I do. 12:06 on April 8th. It is not entirely clear at the moment what is going on in the Strait of Hormuz. We don't know if ships are being allowed to pass or not. But we do know since the earliest days of this entire conflict happening that one of the issues that's come up is war insurance and maritime insurance in general.
- [03:16]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. And we sort of like touched on it in our very first episode that related to the war. But of course, one major reason why ships haven't been moving through is the direct threat of being attacked and sinking. But then another element is the entire insurance element. And then beyond that, like, that adds costs to everything. And it's not, you know, how do you price war insurance? I have no idea. So I have many more questions on this topic.
- [03:43]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah. The whole ecosystem of maritime insurance in general, you hear these things thrown around, like whole loss protection and liability protection, and there's the reinsurers and then there's the normal insurers, and then there are insurance clubs.
- [03:55]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right.
- [03:56]
Tracy Alloway
There are all these things.
- [03:56]
Joe Weisenthal
I want to be part of an insurance. You belong to the soho Club. Me, I belong to an insurance club. Like, think of how that's.
- [04:03]
Tracy Alloway
You kind of have the club jacket thing. I'm wearing a jacket today at the moment. Okay. Well, we do in fact have the perfect guest to talk about all of this. We're going to be speaking with Dorothea Ioannu. She is the chief executive officer of the managers of the American PNI Club.
- [04:17]
Joe Weisenthal
So amazing.
- [04:18]
Tracy Alloway
You can ask her if you can join. Can I join as well? As well as.
- [04:21]
Joe Weisenthal
I need, like one. I need one member to endorse me and another one. That's how it works at these clubs.
- [04:26]
Tracy Alloway
All right, well, the second member who could potentially endorse you is Steve Okalukian. He is the reinsurance director at the American P and I Club. So truly the perfect guest. Thank you so much for coming on. All thoughts.
- [04:36]
Steve Okalukian
Great to be here today.
- [04:37]
Dorothea Ioannou
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
- [04:38]
Tracy Alloway
Why don't you go ahead and tell Joe what is an insurance club and can he be part of one?
- [04:44]
Dorothea Ioannou
Okay, great. First of all, I love that you talked about insurance, especially from Our perspective, clubs, we're enablers. So what are clubs? Clubs in our context, the PNI club, which means protection and indemnity, is a collective, it's a non, not for profit, accessible mutual association. It's not a commercial insurer. And it basically historically is a club that brought together ship owners in the industry that were trying to fill a gap. So they came from a need for society. And really what clubs do is while they insure the owner, they are protecting society because they are insuring the owner for what you referred to before as liabilities. So that would be like losses or damages that they cause to other people, not to themselves. So the clubs never pay own damages. We will not pay damage that occurred to the vessel in an accident or if they have economic loss, their own economic loss. So what PNI clubs do is they step in and they protect the owner and defend the claims, but they ultimately pay whatever is the fair compensation or whatever is adjudicated for passengers that perhaps get hurt on the ship due to negligence of the ship, claims from a crew that might get hurt in an accident, liabilities related to collision. So if the ship hits another ship and they cause damage or personal injury to people or crew on the other ship, they'll pay that. Oil pollution, environmental damage, you know, so cleanup related to that. So basically the way we like to think about pni, and you really should think about it like this, it's the safety net and it is the only way that a ship can trade. So for example, let's look at what you do with your car, right? You're not allowed on the road if you don't have liability insurance, right. You don't have to have own damages insurance. Right? Yeah, but you do need to have liability because we need to know that all the cars on the road have financial security behind them. That if something happens and somebody else gets hurt, there's compensation that's going to come from somebody that's responsible. So that's the concept, let's say of
- [06:47]
Joe Weisenthal
a PNI club and you mentioned that it's structured as a non profit. So I take it that you're doing this just out of the goodness of your heart. No, that's a joke. But talk to us about like, so
- [06:59]
Dorothea Ioannou
then what's the concept behind it?
- [07:01]
Joe Weisenthal
Well, so like why is it that. And then who is bearing the risk for which they're taking profit?
- [07:06]
Dorothea Ioannou
Okay, so let's go a little bit to the history of it so you can understand it. So basically if you go back in time, let's say up until the 1800s, up to a certain point, there was no liability for most of your marine liability insurers. As things started to change and they started to impose strict liabilities, regulatory changes started to happen in various countries, passenger liabilities started to increase and also the liability started to get a lot more volatile. Your regular commercial insurers did not want to touch it, they couldn't price it, they didn't want to deal with it. And also your classic policy would have a limit of the value of the ship and a lot of times liabilities would exceed that.
- [07:40]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, yeah.
- [07:41]
Dorothea Ioannou
So what happened was the ship owners came together to say, well, we can't allow, like you said before, you know, number one, you can't put all of this money aside until the time is needed. And you also can't risk becoming financially destitute. Right. In the instance that you have a catastrophe. So the ship owners came together and said, let's pool our risks. So the not for profit element is this. So the concept goes to, in principle, we each put a certain amount of money into a pool. It's based, let's say, on factors that they agree, club members, they have to be ship owners, by the way. So if you do have an ocean going vessel, we could consider making you a member. Say, so there's a formula or an underwriting formula where everybody pays a certain rate per ton. Okay. And then dating back to the beginning of time when they started this, if all of the losses were less than the amount that they had put aside into the pool, then they could either have it returned or they could save it for the next year and pay less the next year. And each year there would be a reconciliation. But if the losses were more, they each had to put in, you know, pro rata, based on their tonnage and based on the formula. So that's the concept of not profit. Now, of course, back then regulation wasn't the way it is today. So now you're not allowed to just keep enough to pay your losses. So now there's regulatory requirements. So now the not for profit is kind of increased to you need to be healthy, not for profit. So you have to meet certain solvency ratios under regulation. So that's the concept. So I don't know if you wanted to add anything.
- [09:11]
Steve Okalukian
No, but ultimately it's providing at cost insurance.
- [09:14]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right.
- [09:14]
Steve Okalukian
For the members of the club. So like you said, you want to join a club. If the four of us have vessels and we want to form our own PNI club, you could theoretically do that, pool our money together. As Dorothea said, and say, hopefully it's enough to meet the claims for the year. If not, we're fine putting in more, but it's better than going through commercial underwriter who's going to charge double that because they need to make a profit and they don't want to take a loss.
- [09:37]
Dorothea Ioannou
So it's kind of like self insurance. So it's kind of like self insurance.
- [09:41]
Joe Weisenthal
Like self insurance. We might think of something that exists at the firm level and this is self insurance kind of at the industry level.
- [09:47]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right, exactly. Right, exactly.
- [09:49]
Tracy Alloway
So one of the things that comes up immediately if you type in American P and I club into Google is it says it's the only American insurance club. And there are a bunch apparently in London. And actually I would like to talk about how London became like a big insurance capital in general. But why is there only one American insurance club?
- [10:08]
Dorothea Ioannou
Okay, well then we'd have to go back and talk about how the American club was born. Right. So yeah, so historically the, the origins of organized insurance really are the financial center of the London market actually started, I think with, remind me, Steve, with some brokers in a coffee shop in London that, you know, started to decide. Well, you know, we actually, it's the same concept of how the clubs developed, but at the more fundamental level of the basic, well, we don't want to risk losing the cargo or the ship en route. So, you know, underwriters were kind of born through that process, but the American club actually was born much later. So the American operators historically were ensuring with the London clubs. And then 1916, the Americans were not in World War I yet. Right, the UK was. So the UK at that time passed what was called the UK trading with the Enemy act, which basically says, you know, if you are, you know, trading with my enemy, then you're my enemy. And at that time, the United States was not in. Certain American operators were still involved in certain types of trade. And the UK then this act prohibited a lot of American operators from continuing to have their insurance with the UK clubs at that time. So back then, I think was the largest US Broker. Johnson and Higgins, I think at that time, came together with ship owners, industry lawyers and lobbyists and legislators and realized that they were going to have to create something in the United States. And I think that this, it's very interesting how it's kind of very timely of what's going on in the United States right now because we're seeing that, you know, in terms of our peers, in terms of other countries, even our allies or even Non allies, we've kind of fallen behind on the maritime side. Right. So in the industry, like we used to be the number one maritime nation in the world and now we're definitely not. And so they came together and they, they surveyed the American operators to see would you be interested and would you join an American P and I club that would fundamentally work the way the London clubs would already work. And they got a lot of favorable response. And then within the year, they had enabling legislation in New York State which created the structure because it didn't exist before that and needed to be have a regulatory structure. And on February 20, February 14, sorry, Valentine's Day, 1917, the American Club was born. And since then, it's not an easy thing to put together a club, you know, because you have to, you start from scratch, really. And so since then, we have been the only club and we've brought, we've taken the United States through two world wars since then, but also been a part of this whole ebb and flow of the American maritime industry.
- [12:45]
Steve Okalukian
Yeah, And I was gonna say, that doesn't mean that our members are only American.
- [12:49]
Dorothea Ioannou
No.
- [12:49]
Steve Okalukian
So historically, explain this.
- [12:51]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, yeah. So explain why that is just the
- [12:53]
Steve Okalukian
name now is the American club. And you have the Swedish club, you have the London club, you have the Japan club.
- [12:58]
Joe Weisenthal
But there are members who are global.
- [13:00]
Steve Okalukian
Global.
- [13:00]
Dorothea Ioannou
So all over the world.
- [13:01]
Steve Okalukian
Right. So I would say maybe 30 years ago we were probably 80%, maybe even more.
- [13:07]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [13:08]
Steve Okalukian
In the US based members.
- [13:09]
Dorothea Ioannou
In the 90s, we went more of a globalization effort.
- [13:12]
Joe Weisenthal
In the 90s, how do, how do
- [13:14]
Tracy Alloway
ship owners decide which club to be a member of?
- [13:18]
Steve Okalukian
A lot of it's service oriented. Again, who you know. Right. You have a friend who owns a ship and he's like, I'm with the American club, I'm with this club. Have a great experience with them. Close with the claim handlers, underwriters. If I need something, they pick up the phone, I can talk to them. I'll make the introduction. So it could be as simple as that. Or some people just go on Google and say, I need to join, I need P and I insurance. Where could I go? And maybe if they're American, they see American P and I club.
- [13:42]
Tracy Alloway
Is there like a maritime insurance comparison site where you get all the different rates or something like that?
- [13:47]
Dorothea Ioannou
That'd be pretty fun. Yeah, no, but there is an international group of BNI clubs. I don't know, Steve, if you want to talk about that, how that works.
- [13:56]
Steve Okalukian
So there's Collectively now there's 12 international group clubs known as the International Group of PNI Clubs. Collectively we ensure 90% of Ocean going tonnage. So being a member of one of those clubs, it effectively the same way that clubs work together and they pool risks, the group works together in the same way. So being a member of the International group, it allows you. And there's a few core functions of the IG as a reinsurance director, selfishly, I'll say the most important is the reinsurance purchasing power that the group clubs have. So collectively the 12 clubs come together every year and they purchase policies. I think it's the largest reinsurance policy in the world. There's roughly 85 separate reinsurers on this various points of the world. And we insure risks up to. Well, we provide cover about. For about $8 billion per incident. But we buy reinsurance collectively with the other clubs up to 3 billion. So it's fairly unique because they are competitors of ours. But together we realize the best thing for an individual ship owner is to have this group purchasing power and allows us to buy high levels of reinsurance at pretty inexpensive cost.
- [15:11]
Joe Weisenthal
It's so interesting because I guess like insurance per se is all about pooling. Right. So you're just like layers of risk.
- [15:18]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right. In sectors.
- [15:20]
Joe Weisenthal
So I certainly want to get more soon to like the sort of the role of this P and I insurance within the context of the war right now and so forth. But one quick question. I. Have you mentioned that entities contribute based on their tonnage.
- [15:37]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [15:37]
Joe Weisenthal
And you know, when I. When you use the driving insurance analogy to talk about liability, you know, there are various factors that go into how much, how old are you, have you taken defensive driving, how many tickets you've gotten, etc. Why is tonnage, which is not a metric that would suggest risk to others, in my mind an important proxy here.
- [16:00]
Dorothea Ioannou
No, it's not the, it's not a risk factor. It is how we multiply. The rate is per ton, but the rate, the rate per ton comes from all of those risk factors. I don't know if. Steve, you want. So one might pay $1 a ton. Somebody has paid $2 a ton. So we made $5 a ton.
- [16:17]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, I see. So it's not that there's like a fixed per ton. Okay, so talk about that pricing of. Yeah, got it.
- [16:24]
Steve Okalukian
Not all tonnage is created. Right. So if you have a small barge, for instance, that doesn't have any crew, it's just carrying.
- [16:33]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [16:33]
Steve Okalukian
Coal up and down a river versus a large cruise ship where you have multiple crew members and passengers, on there, you know, that one ton, if you will, on each vessel is not the
- [16:44]
Joe Weisenthal
same, so they're gonna get priced differently. Okay, so it's not really about.
- [16:48]
Dorothea Ioannou
It's not about. It's just a measuring tool. Yeah, it's just a measuring tool. But like, let's say you have the same sector, you have the same type of ship, a lot of the same factors. The smaller ship's gonna pay less than the larger ship simply because of the tonnage, let's say. So they might both be charged at $5 a ton, for example. But because also that is also a factor in assessing limitation of liability.
- [17:13]
Joe Weisenthal
Do the clubs play a role in, like, ensuring training of the crew and things like that? That would be proxies for safety.
- [17:23]
Tracy Alloway
Well, this was gonna be my question because one of the other reasons we appreciate insurers here is because, like, they're arbiters of behavior, right. And especially at a time when a lot of governments seem to be, you know, stepping back from certain markets, it's often like the private insurers who are saying, like, this is what you need to do in order to get insurance. What are the requirements for ship owners in order to be eligible for club membership?
- [17:48]
Dorothea Ioannou
Great, great. That's a great question. So one, there are a lot of requirements. And yes, loss prevention is a big thing. That also differentiates us from commercial. Andres, you go to website, you'll see a whole section on loss prevention. So we do look at the quality of the operation. We do look at the experience of the people that are running the. The management. There are warranties as well. So number one, you have to be of a technical level in terms of quality, so that we're going to get a little bit complicated here. But okay, so ships are also subject to other requirements independent of the club, and that's subject to the requirements of their classification society. So the classification society are like the surveyors, the technical arbiters, let's say that comment and make sure that the ship is of certain quality technically. So you have to be in. We call it in class is what we call it. That's definitely a requirement. And then of course, we also require that you are conducting only legal trade. So that is another aspect of that. I will hand it over to Steve to add other aspects on the underwriting side, the main.
- [18:51]
Steve Okalukian
I mean, we do management audits as well, obviously. So we bring. Because sometimes it's a startup, right? Which is tough because there's no history there to see where they've been. Ideally, as an underwriter, you're looking at a client who's been with another club and is looking to switch. So they come over, you see a loss record, you have a pattern, you know where they're operating, what they're doing. When it's a startup, it's a bit more difficult than that where we'll go out. And again, sometimes it could just be proactively. We haven't met this member. Let's see them in person, what they're up to, get on their ships.
- [19:24]
Dorothea Ioannou
Other times surveys. Yeah. From that perspective, quite often we would do a condition survey.
- [19:28]
Steve Okalukian
So we would do in that case like a pre entry condition survey where if the vessel is older than 10 years of age, we'll say we need to see it even though it's in class. We just want to make sure from a P and I perspective there are requirements that there's certain things that check all the boxes for it to come into the club.
- [19:44]
Tracy Alloway
What actually constitutes risky behavior on the part of a ship? Because again, if we go to the driving analogy, like okay, speeding is bad, that would be risky. Driving drunk would be very bad.
- [19:55]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah, what's like the equivalent? Well, you would. Well the other thing that we look at is the history and the claims record. Right. So we would see the incidents and the types of incidents. So if we see patterns or trends, a lot of times it has to do with their trading. So certain trades might be a little bit riskier than others. And that just comes from our actuarial analysis. So each club also takes their portfolios and analyzes the trends on the claims and you'll determine the levels of risk and your risk appetite with that. So like for example, our experience has shown us that container ships have certain types of risk that might not be the same as others. So while some people might look at a container ship and say, okay, well they do liner business, so they're quite organized, right. They're quite sophisticated business liner. So going from one port to another often. Right. So that means that they're very familiar with the two ports. The people are very familiar, familiar. The approach of management is quite sophisticated. And then you might look at it from a risk perspective and say, okay, how much are each of the containers worth in case there's an accident, they fall. But you have to think bigger than that. So for example, if there's a casualty on a container ship and it's a total loss in any seaway, in any ocean in the world, the catastrophe risk is much different than let's say a bulker that might sink or a tanker because Those individual containers, for example, will start to pop up and float to all different places on all different coasts, wherever whatever is adjacent to the sea that it has sunk, that it sank in. In which case, though, part of the liability includes cleaning those all up. And those types of containers are considered hazardous waste. So there's a special disposal process that has to go, can be quite expensive. It can also cause danger to navigation in seaways. So you see what I mean? So it really, you look at the type of ship that you're looking at and you look at the type of claims that it might that can possibly arise. But we look mainly, Steve, I would say at. We look at industry, but we look mainly each club will look at their own experience and decide the, you know, what they classify as risky behavior. We look, we analyze claims and we learn from the claims to decide what we're willing to tolerate and what we're not willing to tolerate, or what we're willing to tolerate. But we're going to charge a lot more, for example, because the risk is higher. I don't know if you wanted to add.
- [22:14]
Steve Okalukian
No, I was going to say a lot of it too is human error.
- [22:16]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [22:16]
Steve Okalukian
So you could do all these actuarial studies and you still say that this vessel operating in this region is likely to have X amount of claims per year, but you can't account for a crew member not sleeping or being. Or falling asleep at the wheel, basically, and causing an accident which has happened.
- [22:31]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [22:31]
Steve Okalukian
So a lot of it's human error not being trained properly. Small things. I mean, as PNI insures, people look at us and think large oil spills, wreck removals. Yes, the biggest headline claims. But our average claim is about 20 or $30,000 per claim.
- [22:46]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [22:46]
Steve Okalukian
So it could be a small crew claim, cargo claim, definitely. So these are the things that add up and determine how a P and I club is operating. Not so much the one off big incident.
- [22:55]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah. And sorry, I just wanted to add one more thing, going back to the original question that you posed in terms of what was our role in terms of training, let's say, or loss prevention. So while we are not the primary people or group that's responsible for training crews, because there's crew managers, the operators themselves have to do that. The training that they get in the schools that they to and stuff are really what we do though is based on our analysis of our claims, though. We identify gaps, we identify issues, we identify trends, and then we do actually have programs that enhance training. So we, from whatever they're doing, we will add things. So you'll look on our website and you'll see that we have regulatory training that the owner can use to actually track the training of their crews that make sure that they know certain minimum standards of the regulatory knowledge. Let's say are they familiar with how to handle like the collision regulations, for example, and other types of modern regulation for navigate navigating at sea. We've also done vlogs, we've done interviews, we do seminars and then we also do like a good catch series. So you'll see that we take our cases and we analyze near misses and then we identify what our owners and their crews and their people ashore can do better in order to prevent that in the future.
- [24:25]
Steve Okalukian
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Joe Weisenthal
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Steve Okalukian
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- [24:48]
Joe Weisenthal
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Steve Okalukian
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- [24:54]
Tracy Alloway
so I have a personal question, which is this is kind of odd lots lore, but I'll repeat it for people that don't know the story. But many years ago, I guess four years ago or so, it feels longer, doesn't it?
- [25:06]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. Okay.
- [25:07]
Tracy Alloway
Four years ago, my furniture got stuck on a container ship called the Ever Forward that ran aground in Chesapeake Babe. And I think an investigation found that the pilot had been using his phone or something, which is kind of crazy to think about. I didn't see any insurance payout from that. I know my property wasn't like actually damaged, but it was kind of annoying not having a couch for a couple months or however long it was. If something like that happens, what is the actual distribution of the insurance payout? So who does it actually flow to ultimately? Like, does it eventually reach the customer who's shipping stuff on these ships?
- [25:46]
Dorothea Ioannou
It's not and there's not like a straightforward answer. There's a lot of dependencies that go along with that. And it has to do with, you know, the contract that you have. Right. And the various insurances that are placed. Now to a certain extent there has to be a certain limit on what could be considered too remote, for example, and under certain regimes, you would probably have to have physical damage in order to be able to claim the economic loss related to that. That is probably the reason why a lot of times when you ship things, they ask, do you want insurance? So you can, so you can Insure yourself because there's no guarantee that ultimately that will get up to the. The PNI Club, for example, because it, it just flows into contractual liabilities under that.
- [26:29]
Steve Okalukian
But, but the shipper would have cargo insurance as a whole to get from point A to point B. And obviously part of that is it's going to be on a vessel, most likely. So if the ship owner is negligent and they're found liable for that loss. So like you said, he was on the phone. Vessel grounded, then a cargo underwriter would go after the owner, which ultimately gets covered by the P and I clubs.
- [26:50]
Dorothea Ioannou
I see.
- [26:51]
Tracy Alloway
Okay.
- [26:51]
Joe Weisenthal
By the way, I'm on your website and you guys have some great posters, these safety posters that people should go check out.
- [26:58]
Tracy Alloway
Do they say don't be on your phone?
- [27:00]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, there's one. Yeah, there's one that says as simple as that. Yeah, there's one that says I kind of want to get one of these framed like from my house. They're really cool looking. I blow it up. But like there's a feed your focus 1. Shut off personal cell phones. So I see you guys, you know, it's like safety stuff. Yeah, people should go check these out.
- [27:16]
Steve Okalukian
Will go out to all our members.
- [27:17]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I'm telling. But also listeners should just go out and download these because they're pretty cool looking.
- [27:22]
Dorothea Ioannou
You know, we also. Sorry, just that you said that something that could also apply to people not in the maritime industry. We have a whole series related also to like sexual harassment that creates awareness for you to understand what that means. That simple things that even based on certain cultural or even habitual type of behaviors that can be considered sexual harassment creates awareness for it. It's a really fantastic.
- [27:42]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, there's a lot of good, there's a lot of good resources here. All right, let's talk about like the context of conversation within the war in Iran. And the reason, I mean, the issue to my mind is like. Okay, so are you affected by it? Because when I think about the situation, I'm by and large not thinking about risks that ships are going to pose to others in the context of. Yeah, right. As opposed to risk to the ship. So like talk to us about like the degree to which for your P and I.
- [28:14]
Dorothea Ioannou
Okay.
- [28:15]
Joe Weisenthal
Is a factor or the Iran war is a factor in the world of PNI insurance.
- [28:19]
Dorothea Ioannou
Well, I'm going to give you the big picture and then Steve will analyze it, we'll break it down. So traditionally war has its own special sector of War underwriters, war insurance. The PNI standard policy excludes liabilities that arise out of war acts. However, there is an excess level of COVID that is offered by the PNI club simply because the standard policies are limited by the value of the vessel. I'm going to hand it over to Steve.
- [28:50]
Steve Okalukian
We've been talking about P and I and liability.
- [28:52]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [28:53]
Steve Okalukian
But if you're a ship owner, you. So you come to us for your P and I insurance.
- [28:56]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [28:57]
Steve Okalukian
You go to a hull and machine underwriter for hull and machinery for the vessel's value, what's on the ship.
- [29:04]
Joe Weisenthal
Right.
- [29:04]
Steve Okalukian
So you have two separate towers of insurance.
- [29:07]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [29:07]
Steve Okalukian
So we cover the liability, they cover the hull. But because we exclude war risks.
- [29:13]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [29:14]
Steve Okalukian
It's traditionally offered. There's a few places they could go. Traditionally, the hull underwriter will give you war risk cover for P and I and hull up to the value of the ship.
- [29:23]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [29:24]
Steve Okalukian
So if you have a $10 million ship, you're insured. So the ship sinks, it's a total loss. You're covered for 10 million. Underwriter, you know, writes you a check. There's a pollution element. They'll cover 10 million of that loss as well.
- [29:37]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [29:38]
Steve Okalukian
So that's traditionally PNI, but because we excluded the whole war underwriters, just to be clear. Yeah.
- [29:45]
Joe Weisenthal
If a ship is sunk in the war.
- [29:48]
Steve Okalukian
Right.
- [29:48]
Joe Weisenthal
Then there could also be a liability on the part of the owner for the pollution caused by one ship having been potential.
- [29:58]
Dorothea Ioannou
There's a lot of nuances to that, too. It has to do with also convention. There's certain international conventions that exclude if it's subject to war. But then there are certain national legislations that carve that out. So it depends on where you might. Where it might happen.
- [30:11]
Joe Weisenthal
So just to be clear, though, like when you talk about. Like you said, there's a war exception
- [30:16]
Steve Okalukian
or you don't cover war risk, we don't cover it. Standard primary cover would exclude it.
- [30:21]
Joe Weisenthal
But why would PNI ever include war risk? Because the question is like war, to my mind. Does not.
- [30:27]
Dorothea Ioannou
What if a crew. What if a crew member dies? That's piano. That's liability.
- [30:30]
Joe Weisenthal
So that is. Okay, I see. I see. Okay. So this is really important.
- [30:34]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [30:34]
Joe Weisenthal
So the. A crew. A crew member's death in a war would be. Or a crew member's death would be pni.
- [30:42]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yes.
- [30:43]
Steve Okalukian
Right.
- [30:43]
Joe Weisenthal
But you don't. In a war that. You do not.
- [30:46]
Steve Okalukian
Correct.
- [30:46]
Dorothea Ioannou
Unless.
- [30:47]
Joe Weisenthal
Got it. Right.
- [30:48]
Steve Okalukian
And on top of. So we mentioned pollution, we mentioned crew wreck removal would be one. So, you know, vessels going through the straight. Yeah. There's mines. If it were to sink and it's a wreck and it's in a shipping channel. Yeah, eventually. And let's say the conflict ends. Well, now you have a wreck there that needs to be moved.
- [31:07]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Steve Okalukian
So PNI clubs would have to step in and remove that wreck, which will cost a lot more than the value of the vessel. So what the PNI clubs do offer is what Dorothe mentioned, excess insurance. So excess of the hull's value, knowing that a record pollution event could likely not crew, but a, you know, a larger loss could breach that 10 million or whatever the value is. But in this example, 10 million, you breach that threshold. The P and I clubs, as part of our collective reinsurance buying, we buy reinsurance for war pni and every ship owner who's entered in any IG club every year pays a small amount. It's not a lot, but they pay a small amount for that coverage. So we fill that gap.
- [31:53]
Joe Weisenthal
So just to be clear, just to spell this out, in a war, right, you do not provide war insurance. The vessel would go to some other commercial carrier and they would have that in place, and they would have that. But the PNI club does offer this excess based on the reinsurance purchasing power beyond what the commercial carrier may offer. Okay, this is great.
- [32:14]
Steve Okalukian
And effectively, we're buying it on their behalf.
- [32:17]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, got us.
- [32:18]
Tracy Alloway
So I have what might be a dumb question, but, like, why are all these different risks so bifurcated between different players? Like, why is there a separate whole protection provider, a war risk provider? If I'm buying home insurance, for the most part, like, I just go to an insurer and it's like, okay, we're going to cover your roof damage as well as, like, whatever else might happen. I don't have to go to three different insurers. For the most part, yeah.
- [32:42]
Steve Okalukian
I think it comes out of exclusions. So originally, the hull underwriters didn't want to offer coverage for liabilities because, like Dorothea said, they didn't know how to price it. It wasn't their forte. So there was a limit and cover. Right, Yeah, I see.
- [32:56]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [32:56]
Steve Okalukian
So P and I clubs were born out of that. So now you have a club and what do you want? You want some kind. You want to be able to project what your claims will be in a given year. So, Pete, the club members are insuring their themselves or each other for what I'll call predictable risks.
- [33:13]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right.
- [33:14]
Steve Okalukian
Going from port A to port B. Yeah. With a certain cargo, accidents happen. But if something Is.
- [33:21]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [33:21]
Steve Okalukian
A little more specialized. So if you have a vessel operator who's involved in drilling and production operations, that would be excluded as well. Because that's not a mutual pullable risk. Because that might be a one off where you may be doing that with your vessel. But the three of us may be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want to cover that. Yep, that's a complete different risk. So war falls into that.
- [33:41]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, it's hard to predict.
- [33:43]
Steve Okalukian
So the PNI underwriters excluded war traditionally and now created there's war clubs or hull would step in and offer limited war cover.
- [33:52]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah, I mean, it's important to keep in mind too, that like war risk is not actuarially stable. Right. It's not like the rest of the risks. It's really just subject to, you know, geopolitics and, you know, national relations, you know, between countries. And it's really just. It's just based on that. Whereas most other types of insurance is actuarially stable. Not always predictable, but actuarially you can analyze it. You can't really do that for war. And then one thing I think is important to note, and this has been a topic of discussion, I think, on the war side, is that during the year in peacetime, it's very cheap.
- [34:29]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, okay.
- [34:30]
Dorothea Ioannou
It's very cheap. And so I know that there was a lot of talk about the cancellations and stuff like that. It's really. They have to do that because they're not underwriting based on the ships transiting war areas, they're underwriting based on trading in peaceful areas. So once an area then becomes subject to a war act, they do have to be able to re rate that. And so even though they gave a notice of cancellation, so these are the headlines we saw at the beginning of
- [35:00]
Tracy Alloway
the conflict saying that like, war risk insurance has been pulled right at the start of a war. Which was very confusing for a lot of.
- [35:06]
Dorothea Ioannou
Confusing. Yes, yes, yes.
- [35:08]
Steve Okalukian
I was getting Instagram reels sent to me of people trying to explain it and complete misconception. And when you're getting reels on PNI insurance, you know, something big is going on.
- [35:19]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you want to explain why the PNI clubs had to give that notice that we gave.
- [35:23]
Steve Okalukian
Yeah.
- [35:23]
Dorothea Ioannou
Because everybody said, oh, the PNI clubs are canceling war. We don't cover war. But in certain instances we do. Why don't you explain where we cover it? Yeah.
- [35:30]
Steve Okalukian
Right, well. Or just to kind of back up a bit on what the cancellation means. It's really a cancellation of the rate, not of the COVID Yeah. So everyone was saying, oh, these vessels are trapped because they don't have insurance.
- [35:41]
Dorothea Ioannou
It's not true.
- [35:42]
Steve Okalukian
And you know, Lloyd's in London is almost doing this to get Back to the U.S. first of all, all those. Not all, but many of the underwriters at Lloyd's are American companies. So it wasn't the UK saying, you know, we're going to get the US back for this. We don't support the war, pull insurance coverage, the vessels are trapped. That's not the case. Every war policy, even though we're not war experts or war underwriters, the way it works, every war policy has a notice of cancellation clause saying if, basically if a war were to break out like you have here and vessels are now in the Gulf, well, we didn't price for that. We gave you a cheap rate because you're sailing around the world now you're in a war zone, the risk changes. So we cancel your policy and meaning we cancel the rate you paid, give you three day notice, you're covered if something happens. So if you're struck, you're still covered. Right. But now after that, three days lapses, you have to buy your cover back at a higher rate based on if
- [36:40]
Dorothea Ioannou
you're trading there, if you're not trading there. Didn't affect you at all. Yeah, yeah. So if you're trading there.
- [36:45]
Steve Okalukian
Right. So that's what we. Those were the headlines, the notice of cancellation.
- [36:49]
Joe Weisenthal
So it looks like this is so helpful.
- [36:51]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah.
- [36:52]
Dorothea Ioannou
Why the P and I clubs give a notice.
- [36:54]
Steve Okalukian
Right.
- [36:54]
Dorothea Ioannou
So P I. Yeah, because that confused people.
- [36:56]
Steve Okalukian
Our mutual risks were not. So anything that's pulled and has this excess war was not impacted. But we also offer cover to charterers, so not just ship owners. If you're chartering a vessel and that.
- [37:09]
Dorothea Ioannou
Do we know what a charter is?
- [37:11]
Tracy Alloway
Okay.
- [37:12]
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy's not. I don't have no idea.
- [37:13]
Dorothea Ioannou
A charter, it's kind of like when you lease a car. You're kind of. It's like you're chartering it. So you don't own it. You don't own it, you're paying somebody to use it. Okay.
- [37:21]
Steve Okalukian
And the owner is liable most of the time for big oil spills, wreck removal, whatever it may be. But a charter could be found liable for some of this.
- [37:29]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [37:29]
Steve Okalukian
So a charter is risk because it's not pooled with an eig and there's separate reinsurances for that. That includes war.
- [37:36]
Dorothea Ioannou
Right.
- [37:36]
Steve Okalukian
So that's always been a pass through. So We'll. We will include charters, P and I, war cover. And because we received a notice of cancellation from our reinsurers, we tell them we have to cancel your war cover in the Persian Gulf, but give us two days and then we're going to come up with a new solution, which is what came up. Yeah, we had a solution. They could buy it back at a higher rate.
- [37:58]
Tracy Alloway
How much did the premium actually change?
- [38:02]
Steve Okalukian
It depends on where they were calling. But it was, to give an example, there was like one vessel, we saw their war slip, their traditional war, before the war broke out, they were paying about $15,000 a year for that. And then when the rates first came out from the underwriters to get the vessel out of the Gulf, it was going to cost about $60,000 just for a seven day period to get it out.
- [38:28]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah.
- [38:28]
Steve Okalukian
And then once the straight closed and there were mines in a straight, there was a separate notice given if you're transiting the straight. So now you have a war. We call it a buyback. It's a reinstatement of the COVID You have your war buyback for the Persian Gulf, you're covered in there. But if you're transiting the straight, there's a new exclusion that may apply with new rating.
- [38:49]
Tracy Alloway
Sorry, you said mines in the strait, Right. A, are there definitely mines? Because I think. Think there's been some discussion of that. And then B, this kind of gets to the question that Joe mentioned at the intro. I know I talked about insurers as enablers of behavior, but when you're in a war situation, I assume people also don't want to be killed.
- [39:07]
Steve Okalukian
Exactly.
- [39:07]
Tracy Alloway
Even if they can get insurance. That was the first.
- [39:10]
Dorothea Ioannou
Exactly.
- [39:10]
Steve Okalukian
That's what we wanted to get to, that the vessel, they weren't trapped because there was no insurance or because the rates went up. They just don't want to put your risk. You don't want to put your crew at risk.
- [39:22]
Dorothea Ioannou
People should know though, too, that ultimately the decision to do that type, of course, is for the master of the vessel to decide. It's not, you know, you can't direct him to do something that he believes will put the crew and the ship at risk. That is rule number one. I did want to comment.
- [39:38]
Joe Weisenthal
It's a core maritime process.
- [39:40]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah. Yes, exactly. The other thing I wanted to mention is that actually I was speaking to one of our colleagues that manages our European subsidiary and he has a extensive experience in Holland on war. And I was given to understand that the ships that were trapped on the inside were given different rates than ships that were looking to go in and out. So the ships that were trapped, it was taken into account that this is not a voluntary, it's not an initiative to trade in a high risk area that they are trapped. And if they want, the rates were significantly lower to come out if you were trapped than it was for those ships looking to actually transit to do regular trade through the high risk. And in those cases when they were looking to trade, the rates were ranging from anywhere from 3 to 10% of the whole value, the ones that were initiating this type of trade. Whereas compared to the ones on the inside, the average rate I was told was about 0.5. It's big. It's a big difference. So that is very important to understand. And insurance was always available. It's just whether you wanted to do it really ultimately. And the operators and our members that we spoke to all made it very clear that the safety of their crew was much more important than everything else.
- [41:12]
Joe Weisenthal
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- [41:30]
Steve Okalukian
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- [41:33]
Joe Weisenthal
Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. It makes a lot of sense to me that like certain types of insurance that are like that end up in this sort of reinsurance or sorry self insurance model are the types that are like highly stable and predictable. Tracy, do you remember 2014 AOL? It was still a public company.
- [42:00]
Tracy Alloway
Oh wow.
- [42:01]
Joe Weisenthal
And I don't know if anyone remembers this, a little bit of insurance history. The CEO said on its earnings call that the company's profits had taken a hit because one of their employees had a very high complicated pregnancy. And it was so big that they actually he noted and then everyone sort of figured it out I think who it was and it was like a pretty egregious like privacy violation. But they were self insured because it's a large company and over time you're like, you know, your health, your health insurance costs are going to be stable from one year to another. But it was just I guess such an expensive pregnancy that he mentioned it on the call as having affected earnings that quarter. But it does seem. Yeah, but it, but it this really put clicked that when you have a type of insurance in which distribute Payout distributions are roughly stable on a year to year basis. That is the natural time for the sort of nonprofit self insurance model of some sort.
- [42:59]
Dorothea Ioannou
Well actually though there is a nuance to that. So for. Yeah, so because it's not, not. It's not really always stable.
- [43:06]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [43:06]
Dorothea Ioannou
It's just spread out enough. It's spread out that there's a resiliency to it.
- [43:09]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [43:10]
Dorothea Ioannou
They're able to withstand the volatility. The model is able to withstand the
- [43:15]
Joe Weisenthal
volatility since there are multiple clubs that carriers can choose. Do clubs risk like sort of snowball effects, couriers defect and then suddenly you have fewer members and then the risk is like magnified. Like is that attention from one club to another? Like I wouldn't want to be part of a small club.
- [43:36]
Dorothea Ioannou
We're a small club. Oh, sorry.
- [43:38]
Joe Weisenthal
I wouldn't want to be a member of like a five. I mean like, I mean like a really like tiny club where it's like, oh, the two of us were going to insure each other.
- [43:45]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah,
- [43:48]
Joe Weisenthal
this is what I'm saying.
- [43:49]
Dorothea Ioannou
No club is that small.
- [43:50]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, this is what I'm saying.
- [43:51]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah.
- [43:51]
Joe Weisenthal
Like it feels like you need some critical mass. Right.
- [43:53]
Steve Okalukian
It's relative. Like I said, the clubs collectively ensure 90 of ocean going tonnage. So being a smaller club is still a big club.
- [44:01]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying like there would be a. In which like mutual insurance doesn't make sense.
- [44:07]
Dorothea Ioannou
There are rules in place to deal with certain things like that. Like you actually, it's true. You actually don't want. Because P and I has a long tail. Right. So like some claims could take. Some claims are still open 10 years after and sometimes even longer. So that's why actually the mutual system allows for multi year openness.
- [44:25]
Joe Weisenthal
I would be part of.
- [44:28]
Dorothea Ioannou
But yes, there are, there are. You know, we do have agreements in place that, that protect us from things like that. Yeah.
- [44:33]
Steve Okalukian
And the way the pooling and reinsurance mechanism works, it's all relative to your size.
- [44:39]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [44:39]
Dorothea Ioannou
So right.
- [44:40]
Steve Okalukian
So the clubs collectively pull claims, individual claims between 10 million and $100 million. And then beyond that, they're buying this reinsurance up to three, three and a half billion. But what you pay is there's a formula which we're not going to go through. It gets complicated, but it's based on your relative size. So if you're a smaller club factor.
- [45:00]
Joe Weisenthal
Right.
- [45:00]
Steve Okalukian
You're paying less for these large maritime casualties where a larger club is going to take a big hit even if it's not their claim.
- [45:07]
Dorothea Ioannou
So it's all scaled. Yeah, it's all scaled and it's quite fair.
- [45:10]
Steve Okalukian
Right.
- [45:11]
Dorothea Ioannou
And the concept actually is that everybody pays their share over time, right?
- [45:16]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [45:18]
Dorothea Ioannou
What you take out, you need to put back in.
- [45:20]
Steve Okalukian
Right, right.
- [45:21]
Dorothea Ioannou
And that's at the. At the club level and at the. At the. Yeah, the group level, let's say. Yeah.
- [45:28]
Tracy Alloway
Just going back to the Strait of Hormuz for a second. There are some ships from certain companies that have been like, running through despite everything going on. And the one that springs to mind is Dynacom. And I actually, I sent an email to them asking if. If I could get their owner captain on the phone on odd lots. And I haven't received a response, perhaps unsurprisingly, but, like, what is enabling them to get through versus other shits?
- [45:53]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yeah, I don't think that that's something that we'd be able to really. Okay. They're not our members. We're not familiar. We do have another member, though, that was hit. The other thing I wanted to mention is that despite the fact that the PNI clubs are not the primary insurer on a case of war, we actually do take an active part. So we are involved. We are close to the member because we have a very close relationship with all of our members to begin with. Right. We are most of the time copied on all the correspondence. So we also provide some guidance because besides the P and I side, we also have what's called an FDND cover. And that's freight to margin defense. And so that helps the owners with disputes that may arise, contractual disputes. We don't insure the claims themselves, but we provide the guidance, the legal guidance. We have a lot of lawyers within the club, but we also support them if we have to hire lawyers outside to defend or to pursue any claims that they may have. And that's legal costs cover. So a lot of the times, even on cases that we are not directly responsible for, or not directly not responsible for, but covering, we're usually quite involved because like I said, we're protection and indemnity. The protection part of it involves standing next to the member and guiding them. But the intricacies of any particular owner being able to cross the straight is not something that we're actually privy to. So. But yeah, I mean, the only thing I can say is that I know that there are certain factors that are looked at by the Iranians when they are attacking, you know. Yeah.
- [47:18]
Joe Weisenthal
This is such an interesting conversation. You can go a lot longer. I'm mindful of the time I'm looking at this article about Dynacom, the owner of the billionaire shipping magnate, Greek buccaneer George Prokopieu. That's the name of the firm I noticed. So the American Club. You have office locations in New York, London, also in Piraeus in Greece, and then also Shanghai and Hong Kong. And I'm just curious, like, setting aside this current moment, aside. We all sort of know that Greece specifically is one of the centers of shipping for a long time. But has it moved east over time? Okay. We know that a lot of the ship building is happening in Asia. And we also know that so many of the routes are Asia dominated, et cetera. Have the financial flows of insurance moved east in the same way the physical flows. Have the financial flows of insurance moved towards Asia? I should say specifically on the insurance side. Yeah. On the insurance side, has insurance not from an international. Towards Asia in the same way that the trade flows have?
- [48:23]
Dorothea Ioannou
No, not from an international perspective. China does have its own P and I club. It's not a member of the international group of PNI clubs. They do have reinsurance relationships with some of the clubs that are members of the group. It's a very large P and I club. But it generally ensures Chinese managed and owned.
- [48:39]
Joe Weisenthal
Even though shipbuilding and trade is so Asia dominated, the financial element of the insurance has.
- [48:45]
Dorothea Ioannou
Not on the insurance. No, it hasn't really. Not from the international side of things. Not yet. Not from the international side of things. I think even all the major traders are still insuring with the uk, Scandinavian and American clubs. Yeah. I would say, Steve, I don't know if you've seen anything different. I've not seen anything different.
- [49:08]
Tracy Alloway
If the US starts building ships again, is that great for the American P and I Club? Would your membership automatically.
- [49:15]
Dorothea Ioannou
It wouldn't automatically increase. No. Because there's no directive. There's no directive in any country that you need to. That your insurance has to be, you know, domestic. But it would probably increase our potential to grow if we began to build ships in the United States. Yeah.
- [49:31]
Tracy Alloway
Do you see any signs of that actually happening? We've done a number of episodes on how to.
- [49:35]
Joe Weisenthal
People who want it to happen.
- [49:36]
Tracy Alloway
People who want it to happen.
- [49:37]
Dorothea Ioannou
Yes. I mean, we want it to happen too. Well, we want the American maritime industry generally to become stronger. We think it's. We do think it's a shame how it's developed over time. The American Club also was a part of that. You know, like I said, up until we internationalized, you know, our membership was very, very small. Because it was only American and the maritime fleet was shrinking at that time. Obviously we are the only, we are the only club. While the, while all the clubs have a presence in the United States. Not all of them, but many of them. They don't have an actual regulatory domicile like we do. So the American club and all of its people in the United States are probably the most significant and the deepest bench in terms of know how of managing and underwriting maritime casualties. And we're very proud of that when we've been doing that for almost 110 years now. So we're not us personally, but the company itself. But yeah, obviously we are very supportive and we are actually very active and we have relationships also with all the agencies. We, we tr. We actually insure all of the MARAD training vessels. We know all of the agencies very, very well. We have active relationships and we are very much a part of that American industry that is looking to bolster what's happening here in the United States.
- [50:53]
Tracy Alloway
Joe, you need to build a ship and then, and then join the club.
- [50:56]
Joe Weisenthal
You mentioned the door shipping startup, so it could happen.
- [51:00]
Tracy Alloway
All right, Dorothea Ioannou and Steve Okalukian, thank you so much for coming on opbots. Really appreciate it.
- [51:05]
Dorothea Ioannou
Thank you so much. Brian, having us.
- [51:07]
Joe Weisenthal
That was so great.
- [51:08]
Dorothea Ioannou
Thank you so much.
- [51:09]
Joe Weisenthal
That was really good.
- [51:10]
Tracy Alloway
Thank you. All right, Joe. That was a fascinating episode for sure. I feel like I am slowly getting a better handle on the maritime insurance industry. It is interesting to me how like divided all those different risks are. And to Steve's point, the idea being that like, well, if you're a P and I club, you can kind of price out the risks of going from A to B with like a certain type of cargo in a certain like, predictable manner. But if you're doing war risk insurance, that's a very different kettle of fish.
- [51:53]
Joe Weisenthal
You know, it's sort of.
- [51:54]
Tracy Alloway
That's a maritime expression for you.
- [51:56]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, yeah. Good job.
- [51:57]
Tracy Alloway
Thanks.
- [51:59]
Joe Weisenthal
It actually makes a lot of sense to me this idea that like, like war, the pricing for war insurance would reset very quickly. Right. Because one could imagine say like buying a multi year war, you know, oh, you're gonna buy this insurance and it's gonna cover you for the next few years. Most of the time there's not war. And so most of the time you don't wanna be paying a war premium, et cetera. So it's all just like a trade off. It's like, okay, like no one loves it. A war breaks out. So suddenly your premiums are Gonna surge the next week. Yeah, I don't think anyone's very excited about that. But that's just the flip side for getting really low war risk insurance. The vast majority of the time when war is not going to be an issue for you, it's just a trade off in terms of like, how long do you want to be paying for it and so forth. So that actually made quite a bit of sense to me.
- [52:51]
Tracy Alloway
Well, it also seems like the limiting factor on ships getting through the strait at the moment isn't in fact very short. It's like whether you can survive.
- [53:00]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. The surv. Yeah. The captains and the safety of the crew and just being sort of like insane.
- [53:06]
Tracy Alloway
So even though insurers run the world, there are limits to the abilities of insurers, I would say, to affect humanity.
- [53:12]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I also, like, like, you know, I it. At first I was like, well, how is a ship and their liability like a car where there's, you know, but you know, then you see like all their posters and it's saying all of these very safety. No, they're really interesting because it's something like, you know, make sure you're getting enough sleep.
- [53:31]
Tracy Alloway
Are your hatches tight?
- [53:32]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. Are your hatches tight? Don't check your email all the time. I think there's a drinking one too. Oh, yeah. Take control of fatigue. Everything in moderation. So it's actually very similar to car, to sort of liability insurance for a car, just in the fact that, like, the basics of safety apply to a ship as well.
- [53:52]
Tracy Alloway
I'm gonna print out the cell phone one and get it framed and put it on your desk, Joe, as a present.
- [53:58]
Joe Weisenthal
I would like that. I would like that.
- [54:00]
Tracy Alloway
All right, shall we leave it there?
- [54:01]
Joe Weisenthal
Let's leave it there.
- [54:02]
Tracy Alloway
This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
- [54:07]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Erman, dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks at Kalebrooks. And for more Oddlaws content, go to bloomberg.comoddlaws we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24. Seven in our our Discord, Discord GG oddlots.
- [54:28]
Tracy Alloway
And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about maritime insurance, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
- [54:50]
Joe Weisenthal
Sam.