<\/p>\n
The blockage of the Suez Canal for nearly a week will result in a \u201clarge loss\u201d for Lloyd\u2019s of London, its chairman said on Wednesday, as the insurance market recorded a 900 million pound ($1.2 billion) pretax loss in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Canal is working to clear the backlog after the refloating this week of a stranded giant container ship. The blockage threw global supply chains into disarray.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters it was too early to estimate the exact loss, but \u201cit\u2019s clearly going to be a large loss, not just for the vessel but for all of the other vessels that were trapped and unable to get through\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He added this could mean a loss for Lloyd\u2019s of around $100 million or more.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Liability insurance claims for ships and cargo impacted by the delay are expected to fall initially to the container ship Ever Given\u2019s liability insurer, UK P&I Club. But UK P&I Club will also use reinsurance, some of it in the Lloyd\u2019s market, industry sources say.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Carnegie-Brown said Lloyd\u2019s may be on the hook for around 5-10% of the total reinsurance claims.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fitch Ratings said this week that global reinsurers were likely to face hundreds of millions of euros of claims due to the incident.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 2020 loss for the 330-year-old Lloyd\u2019s market, home to around 100 syndicate members, compares with a 2.5 billion pound profit in 2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lloyd\u2019s expects to pay out 3.4 billion pounds in 2020 COVID-19 claims net of reinsurance, with Carnegie-Brown saying many of those payments would be related to the cancellation of major events such as the Wimbledon tennis tournament. COVID-19-related payments will continue this year, he added.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But Lloyd\u2019s said premium rates had risen 10.8% last year and rate rises had continued into 2021. Insurers typically increase rates after experiencing large losses.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After several closures due to the pandemic, the Lloyd\u2019s underwriting floor will reopen on May 17. Carnegie-Brown said surveys showed most market employees expect to return to the office \u201cthree-plus days a week\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7284 pounds)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n (Reporting by Carolyn Cohn. Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Mark Potter)<\/em><\/p>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The blockage of the Suez Canal for nearly a week will result in a \u201clarge loss\u201d for Lloyd\u2019s of London, its chairman said on Wednesday, as the insurance market recorded a 900 million pound ($1.2 billion) pretax loss in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canal is working to clear the backlog after the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[15168,1281,1576,4435,7859,412,2316,1406,3974],"class_list":["post-26611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-blockage","tag-canal","tag-due","tag-large","tag-lloyds","tag-london","tag-loss","tag-sees","tag-suez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/26612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}