The recent second IIMS UAE Branch webinar on COVID-19 practical effects on “Claims handling and Surveys” – are they here to stay? attracted 436 registrations from 43 countries. The initiative was well-received by the community and there was excellent feedback by attentive listeners at the peak of the participation. The initiative taken by the IIMS UAE Branch to bring value to its local and international members was evident by the community coming together for this free to attend seminar for everybody.
The webinar attracted three prominent panellists who were Chris Moxon, Senior Claims Executive at Standard Club, Joe Balls, Director at Omni Corporate Solutions Ltd and Alexander Gray, Manager at P.L. Ferrari: Specialist P&I Insurance Broker. All three candidly expressed their thoughts and views on their areas of expertise.
The P&I club perspective was given by Chris Moxon indicating their points of view. Chris has wide experience of representing owners and charterers while in private practice, including in relation to cargo contamination, shortage, off-hire, and charter party termination matters. The audience directed most of the questions to Chris, which indicated the value he brought to the webinar.
Alexander Gray from P.L Ferrari, London, a lawyer, also contributed his thoughts from a broker’s perspective. Being a solicitor in England and Wales with the Standard Club and Ince & Co Monaco SARL, Alex worked for the P&I club in the past. He supported the panel discussion very positively in short and precise answers to the questions directed to him and lastly Joe Balls being the director at Omni from the UK brought in the much-needed seniority. With over 30 years in the business he spoke liberally on the hull and machinery aspect of the changes that COVID-19 era has brought into the broking style. The age-old face to face interaction which was the crowning glory of a successful broker is now seemed to be replaced by either web calls or telephone calls which is seen as the new normal. Joe is a member of the Chartered Insurance Institute and has been broking since 1963. He brought all that experience and heritage to bear as he spoke with conviction.
The changes that were discussed during the webinar by panellists are here to stay at least for the foreseeable future and perhaps longer. In all it was a very valuable hour and a half. Eventually all questions and answers were answered by the three panellists.
Some of the questions were:
– “Is force Majeure clause approved by English law? If not is this important to keep the clause in the CP agreement”
– “Current challenges/ survival issues, adaptive and technological transformation and future prospective of survey market” – “How do the surveyors go onboard during COVID-19 situation?”
IIMS UAE Branch thanks all the online participants and the panellists. Last but not the least to meet the minimal cost of the webinar operations Lockton Group, P.L Ferrari & Co. and Omni had picked up a small sponsorship commitment as an annual support member for the IIMS UAE Branch and were duly acknowledged by IIMS President, Capt. Zarir Irani, who moderated the webinar in his usual confident manner. There were no technical glitches nor any interruptions. The question and answers were brought in by those participants who actually pre-registered the questions and had only positive remarks to give at the end of their questions being answered to the point.
