The Challenge

Teekay’s risk managers have to track 100 ships around the world. The Joint War Committee defines standard war zones but many risk managers agree insurance terms for their own defined zones, ports and terminals.

Teekay operates its vessels on a charter basis. The insurance cost based on the charterer usage can be charged back to the charterer. However, a ship owner must get its advice (invoice) for the insurance out to the charterer within a defined time period. 

Before adopting Insurwave, the ship’s captain would email Teekay’s risk management team, who would email the broker, who would then be updated about the beginning, middle and end of each voyage for every ship. The broker may have had to calculate premiums manually, interpret emails about vessel location and refer to the slip for valuation and calculation terms. 

The broker may also have had to endorse a policy via email or phone, or even in person, while trying to produce the invoice within the specified time period. Then they would have to go back to the insurers to receive authorisation.

All this was costly, slow and led to inaccurate reporting: you don’t really have the data you need to know your live exposures, and most importantly, that you’re covered when things go wrong.

The Solution

The Insurwave platform offers a connected insurance experience that eliminates manual tasks, email traffic and document production.

We digitise contract terms with Teekay, the broker and the insurer, stating what is charged in each war zone depending on how long the vessel is there and which ports it visits. We have a record on our system of a real-time location point via a ship’s vehicle registration (IMO). So we can manage everything on our platform, taking information off email into a live data world. 

The Insurwave platform connects all parties with this contract. Each party can access data as it wants – via automated email notifications or on the platform itself. Everyone has the same live information, meaning reconciliations are a thing of the past. 

The platform is automatically triggered when Teekay’s vessel is entering and leaving a war zone, resulting in algorithmic premium calculation, document and invoice production and notification.

The Outcome

The ‘live’ premium ledger of the account connects everybody. The broker can look at it, the shipper can look at it, the underwriter can look at it, reducing the requirement to reconcile three slightly different versions of what happened, and what additional premium is due.  

For the client

• No need to manually track vessels Teekay no longer has to manually report the positions of all its vessels. It gets an aggregated real-time view of all activity on its account in one place. 
•  Significantly reduced workload Information is immediately accessible on platform, so no one has to call or email to provide it. This leaves the ship’s captain free to carry out important operational tasks and the risk management team can spend more time focusing on proactive risk management rather than dealing with reactive mitigations.
• Invoice delivered to charterer without insurance delays Insurwave provides Teekay with its advice and premium invoice at the point that the vessel completes the part of its voyage which crosses war zones. This means Teekay are able to pass on insurance costs to the charterer faster. 

For the broker

The broker no longer has to spend hours calculating quotes and premiums, and issuing invoices. We give them a running ledger of all of their premiums and discounts, and whether the discounts are applied at an additional premium (AP) level or at the end of the policy period. It makes projecting their insurance costs easier, which ultimately helps them manage their budget better.

• Reduction in administration effort for brokers as they no longer need to manually record risk event data, calculate premiums and produce advice notes and invoices.

• Significant reduction in processing errors through automated data tracking, and algorithmic premium calculation and processing.

• Elimination of reconciliation activities No month-long period of renewing at the end of the policy, looking back at the previous policy period and collating emails. Now information percolates through to the end client and their insurers real time. And they all work off a single, auditable version of the data that they can trust.

• Ability to offer clients a connected digital experience Brokers that are able to go beyond risk transfer administration, to a connected risk management + risk transfer experience, are going to improve retention and new business win rates.

For the insurer

War risk insurers will have better data than they have ever had, giving them deeper insights in to their exposures, and when things go wrong, a live handle on the situation supported by independently provided data they can trust and share with the end client and broker and reinsurers. 

• Live (and historic) risk behaviour and exposure data No more will insurers need to refer back to unwieldy excel reports provided periodically to understand their exposures, or to assess a live loss scenario. Instead, they have access to a live ledger of vessel, location and exposure information, with the context of what has happened before. 

• Proactive risk alerts to highlight cover gaps and leakage Rules-based monitoring means insurers know, without having to ask, when a client risk may be approaching or going beyond the limits of cover, allowing them to proactively offer additional cover. This ensures cover and premiums are in synch, the end client has the cover they want, and the insurer is compensated accordingly. Where insurers want to provide risk management advice, they are able to automatically deploy their expertise based on monitoring live risk behaviour.

• Connected digital experience with brokers, clients and reinsurers with information shared once on Insurwave’s platform, manual information sharing is eliminated. This brings the insurer closer to those it wants to be closer to, whether that is reinsurers, brokers or insurance buyers.