In the medium term Singapore intends to have its own P&I Club, and is working towards having a Singapore Clause in two years’ time, according to Gina Lee-Wan, chairman of the legal and insurance committee under the Singapore Shipping Association and co-head of the maritime and aviation practice at law firm Allen & Gledhill.
S&P Global Platts reported that a Singapore Clause would consist of terms of insurance cover or the wordings on which the cover is underwritten. A process to put in place a team which will draft the Singapore Clause has begun. The intention will be to look at gaps between various international forms or plans and “build an overarching product that is missing at the moment”, she said.
The eventual aim is to have a Singapore P&I Club, but Lee-Wan admitted that it would take time to achieve this goal, although she noted that SWRM, its existing war risk insurance, was expanding. She said that by mid-April it had more than 475 ships insured, 12m gt, entered by 27 shipowners. Tier I of the SWRM cover is being provided out of Singapore, Lee-Wan said, with SWRM now building reserves. SWRM is fully reinsured and the capital supporting the mutual has increasingly come from the reinsurers based in Singapore. The Strait of Malacca was declared an excluded area by the London market’s Joint War Committee in 2005, and at the time Singapore had no such vehicle with which to influence premiums or enable it to waive the exclusion. “With SWRM, Singapore shipowners have an autonomous facility designed to protect against maritime security threats,” Lee-Wan said.
SWRM offers hull war risk cover up to the insured value of the ship, with excess war risk P&I cover of up to $550m, plus optional additional insurance such as loss of hire.
https://www.platts.com/latest-news/shipping/singapore/interview-singapore-aims-for-homegrown-pampi-26728070