Brit launches “Keel” for placement of Marine War breach call risks

Fairfax subsidiary Brit Ltd has launched marine consortium ‘Keel’, which it said would “revolutionize the writing of Marine War and breach call risks”.

Brit said that Keel offered up to $152.2m of capacity per risk and provided instant quotes that were fully sanction screened. Brit noted that this latter condition was “an area of increasing importance in the growing regulatory environment affecting marine war risks”.

Brit said that hundreds of thousands of trips were made by vessels each year into high-risk areas but which were excluded from annual war risks protection. For these trips, ‘breach calls’ were required to provide insurance cover. Brit said that traditionally this had required a time-consuming placement process for short-term and short-notice trips that were frequently completed before the insurance paperwork could be concluded.

Brit said that Keel, utilizing a new trading platform that offered brokers a single interaction to place breach calls for vessels in seconds, the Keel consortium directly aimed “to improve efficiency in covering breach call risks, allowing brokers the opportunity to obtain instant, fully supported quotes around the clock”.

Gary Brice, Head of Marine and Space at Brit, said that the insurance industry’s placement of breach call risks had historically been “an onerous and time consuming process”, adding that “through our Keel consortium, Brit is aiming to directly address this, delivering a solution that enables the placement of risks in seconds, not minutes, or days, as is currently the norm”.