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MARINE | Data & Safety In association with North P&I Club
Technology driving safety and loss prevention Alvin Forster, Loss Prevention Executive, North P&I Club, explains how the Club is using shipping insurance data and collaboration to drive safety and loss prevention initiatives The use of data and technology in the marine insurance industry has taken great forward steps in the last decade. In an industry often portrayed as being more comfortable with tradition rather than disruption, there is a realisation that the vast amount of information available out there has huge value…if properly harnessed. There are two key areas where we in North’s loss prevention department have really embraced the use of technology by partnering with innovative and forward-thinking companies. The first concerns how we as an insurer can best assess the risk of the vessels we cover and any potential new business. Traditionally, we used simple, but nonetheless effective, The Marine Insurer Americas Edition | June 2021
metrics such as historic claims performance and regulatory compliance performance (such as port state control inspection deficiencies and detentions) to help us evaluate the risk a vessel, a fleet or an operator presents. These are still great indicators and we continue to rely on them. But harnessing the huge amounts of real-time shipping data available can tell us more. For example, AIS data, which tracks vessels all around the world, when coupled with casualty and claims data, can identify higher risk operations and trades. Therefore, we have partnered with Concirrus to develop an analytics tool that not only gathers this data but also makes sense of it.
APPROPRIATE WEIGHTING So, instead of basing our assessment of risk solely on a
