IUMI is pleased to announce that its 2021 analysis of the global marine insurance market – known as IUMI Stats – has been published. This report presents a range of statistical data from a variety of sources, including IUMI’s own data, to provide an insight into the marine insurance market within the context of global trade and shipping. For the second year, IUMI Stats also contains analysis from its major claims database which now comprises 9,000 claims records amounting to US$ 14 billion of major losses.

Highlights from the 2021 report include:

• Global marine insurance premiums for 2020 increased by 6.1% from 2019 to reach USD 30 billion. This demonstrated real market development in all marine insurance lines (except P&I) for 2020, however early indications in 2021 are showing that continued development is uncertain.
• The hull underwriting sector grew by 6% in 2020 and global premiums reached USD 7.1 billion. Importantly, the gap between global premiums and global tonnage had begun to reduce. For the first time in many years loss ratios had improved to return the sector to a technical break-even position. However, any recovery had begun from a very low base and a return to more normal levels of shipping activity is likely to increase current low levels of claims frequency.
• As with the hull sector, cargo underwriting also returned to a technical break-even position in 2020 having achieved a 5.9% increase in global premiums to reach USD 17.2 billion. However, a likely increase in nat cat events going forward coupled with increased risk accumulations has the potential to impact cargo underwriting performance in 2021.
• The offshore energy market reported a global premium base of USD3.6 billion, representing for the first time an increase in premiums since 2019 of 8.6%. This is the first real increase in premium base since the 2014 drop in oil price.

The full report is available to download from IUMI’s website.