Swedish Club's NextGen Loss Prevention

The marine mutual insurer Swedish Club has introduced the next generation of Loss Prevention. It means that shipowners can now be offered real time personalized loss prevention, tailored to their location, and voyage profile.

Trade Enabling Loss Prevention (TELP) allows The Swedish Club to use a combination of the latest automatic identification system (AIS) technology coupled with solid statistics and expertise built up over years to map a risk profile for an individual vessel at every stage of its voyage, It can then provide members and their vessels with timely, tailored advice when they are approaching areas of particular risk.

Over the last ten years the Loss Prevention team has carried out detailed analysis of the entire fleet, examining where the ships have been trading, based on AIS, and what casualties have occurred. This has provided the Club with a risk profile, frequency and claims cost for every port and sea area in the world, based on its own statistics.

“TELP is a new generation of loss prevention,” explains Lars A. Malm, Director Strategic Business Development & Client Relations. “As soon as one of the ships in the trial is flagged as sailing for a destination identified as high-risk, we can send them tailor-made Loss Prevention advice based on where they are going, the type of vessel they are operating, and the cargo.

“We believe that by providing this proactive approach and advice, we can help members to trade more safely.”

The information fed back from TELP can involve problems with pilots or towage, difficulty with Customs or other authorities, navigational challenges in the approach channel, frequent issues handling certain cargoes, weather patterns to look out for, or identifying areas where there have been frequent groundings or collisions.

The information exchange can also go both ways – AIS does not give information on what cargo is being carried, but if the member provides that information then the Club can provide very specific guidance and advice relating to that particular cargo.

Adds Malm: “For many years The Swedish Club has been meticulously recording loss codes for each and every casualty. It means that for every cargo claim, the Club knows what type of cargo was involved, where and why the issue occurred, where the cargo was loaded and where it was discharged. For every collision or grounding, The Swedish Club knows where, how and why it happened.”

Whilst the pilot project has a degree of manual involvement, on roll-out the service will be delivered to the Club’s members electronically through an automatic system.