Clyde & Co has a leading yacht and superyacht team with over 20 years of experience. The second series of the Clyde & Co podcast seeks to demystify the process of buying a superyacht. Yacht brokers, family office advisers and bankers, as well as senior Clyde & Co lawyers, join superyacht industry commentator John Leonida to discuss every aspect of buying a superyacht.

A recurrent story of 2022 was the seemingly endless supply of superyachts sinking, groundings and fires. In this last podcast of series two, John Leonida, host of the Clyde & Co superyacht podcast sat down with his former colleague at Clyde & Co, superyacht insurance partner Mike Roderick to unpick the superyacht insurance world, one clause at a time and considered what has been happening in the last year or so.

In his 34 years at Clyde & Co Mike has seen most types of marine claims and he has advised and litigated most of them. He has probably written some of the insurance clauses you rely upon. Unsurprisingly, John and Mike get into a no-nonsense “tell it how it is” conversation. 

A marine insurance policy is not a commodity, especially when we consider insuring a superyacht that, to replace could cost tens, if not hundreds of millions. For all the fun and excitement that a superyacht brings, as far as the insurance market is concerned, ultimately a superyacht is a ship and an insurer will absolutely expect that superyacht to be managed, maintained and operated in a professional way. Failure to do will have consequences. A policy may not pay out.

And as superyacht fires are a hot topic right now. Preventative measures must be in place. It is not enough that you have all the safety equipment onboard. It must be maintained as the manufacturer intended. Any fire will be investigated. Mike continues; “ A fire can happen in a number of circumstances and we've seen that quite recently. I've dealt with recently a fire in the galley which then spread to the rest of the boat and the yacht became a constructive total loss…. It is not unknown in the yachting world that an owner deliberately torches their own boat to make an insurance claim. That has happened. I've been involved in cases like that”   

The intricacies of yacht insurance are as topical as they are fascinating to hear discussed. We hope you enjoy listening and thank you for tuning in to this second season of The Clyde and Co superyacht podcast series. 

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