Marine Insurance
What is Marine Insurance?
Marine insurance is protection from damage or complete loss of ships and their cargo. Marine insurance can also cover shoreside or offshore infrastructure related to transportation of marine cargo. Thus, marine insurance coverage is placed on cargo–handling equipment, oil drilling rigs, pipelines, even shoreside cargo warehouses. Marine insurance includes subspecializations of insuring large ships, cargo, and yachts. Mariners Insurance Mexico provides yacht insurance in Mexico.
Marine Insurance History
History suggests that coverage for marine risks was the first type of formal insurance. This is documented in
the cuneiform script of ancient Babylon, in the Code of Hammurabi,
written approximately 1,790 B.C. It describes
merchants paying lenders an additional fee (or premium
). In return, lenders would forgive debt on financed
merchandise in the event it should be stolen or lost at sea before arrival at its destination.
Through the next three thousand years, much knowledge was gained through insuring marine risks, and eventually this knowledge was transferred to insuring other risks. Motivated by tragedies such as the Great Fire of London (1,666 A.D.), other forms of insurance sprang up to help people deal with risk, such as home insurance, car insurance, health insurance, and commercial insurance.
The first record of insurance for marine risks is found in the Code of Hammurabi, 1,750 B.C.
Types of Marine Insurance We Offer
The types of Mexico marine insurance we offer include:
- boat insurance
- boat liability insurance
- marine cargo insurance
(The type of marine cargo insurance we offer is also called overland trucking risk
)
The General Average
In approximately 900 B.C, the unwritten lex maritima
of Rhodes described the general average as a
principle of maritime law. It is a form of cost–sharing which remains today, first codified in the York Antwerp Rules of 1890.
The damage to, or loss of, ship or cargo is shared by all parties to the shipment, by each in proportion to his interest. For instance, if bad weather requires a captain to jettison some portion of cargo to save the ship, parties whose cargo landed safely proportionally indemnify those whose cargo had to be cast away.
The loss is apportioned to each stakeholder's investment in the total value of the shipment including the ship, her fuel, and the value of each merchant's cargo. For presumably, without the intentional partial loss, the ship and all its cargo would have been lost. The laws of many countries respect this principle of equity, or value given for value received.
