This month we sat down with Lars Lange, Secretary General of IUMI, and John Miklus, AIMU President and member of the IUMI Chicago 2022 Conference Organizing Committee to discuss the much anticipated IUMI conference, which is taking place in Chicago in September. To find out more about this year's conference and how to register,  just visit iumi2022.com

In 2020, IUMI and the World Maritime University (WMU) signed an MOU agreeing to work together on areas of mutual interest. The MOU includes a bursary, covering 75% of the full tuition fee, for two marine insurance professionals to complete the WMU’s Marine Insurance Law & Practice Postgraduate Diploma programme.  In this month's IUMI podcast we talk to Dr Henning Jessen, professor and programme coordinator to find out more about the Postgraduate Diploma programme and to Michelangelo Todoro - the first student to be awarded IUMI’s bursary.

This month we sit down with Lars Lange, IUMI Secretary General, to discuss the International Quality Assessment Review Body (IQARB). IQARB is an advisory body that has been established to review the certification process of the quality management systems of IACS Classification Societies. As chair of the body, Lars discusses the background of IQARB, the role of IMO and flag states in the body, its benefits to IUMI, and what the future of the programme holds.

In this month's podcast we speak with Dave Matcham, Chief Executive of the International Underwriting Association and Secretary of the IUMI Facts & Figures Committee, about IUMI's Major Claims Database. In 2018 IUMI launched a pilot project to see if it could create a large and consistent loss database for hull and cargo with standardised data from member companies in order to analyse major losses with respect to loss severity, frequency, location and cause. Now, almost four years on, Dave discusses how the project has progressed, the data that is now being published and what is coming up in the near future. 

The current crisis in Ukraine has directly impacted shipping in the area as well as the safety and welfare of many seafarers. In this podcast Lars Lange, IUMI Secretary General, discusses the impact of the crisis and international sanctions on global shipping and marine insurance, the current situation for war risk insurers, what challenges underwriters of Russian related risks are experiencing, what IUMI is doing to help its members during this crisis, plus much more. 

In IUMI’s latest podcast we speak with Svenn Andersen, Senior Surveyor at the Norwegian Hull Club, about the difficulties and challenges with engine room fires. Engine room fires are one of the most common fires onboard ships and dealing with them and preventing them are key to safety at sea. Svenn highlights the causes of these fires, preventative measures that can be taken and industry guidelines to follow to mitigate the risk during this highly informative podcast.  

In our first podcast of 2022 we are joined by Neil Roberts, Head of Marine Underwriting at the LMA and member of IUMI's Policy Forum, to talk about piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Neil draws on his years of experience to discuss the current challenges with piracy in the area, the measures to help alleviate the problem and a look to the future.

As the year draws to a close, IUMI President Richard Turner speaks about the 2021 year for IUMI in the last podcast of the year. Richard discusses the ongoing pandemic, the highlights of the 2021 year, the challenges marine insurers are currently facing and what IUMI will be focusing on in 2022.

In this special podcast we are delighted to speak with two successful candidates from IUMI's online cargo and hull tutorials. We are joined by Kyveli Manta, an Underwriting Administrator at the American Hellenic Hull Insurance Company, and Roshan Kumar, Assistant Manager at The New India Assurance Co Ltd., who completed the hull and cargo tutorials respectively. Both candidates did exceptionally well and passed the final exam with distinction. During this podcast Kyveli and Roshan offer insight into the benefits of the tutorials, the reasons for choosing these courses and how to apply them in their daily work. They also share their views on the challenges they see ahead for the marine insurance industry.

In our latest podcast we are joined by IUMI Facts & Figures Committee Chairperson Philip Graham, and Vice-Chairperson Astrid Seltmann, to take a deep dive into the IUMI statistics that were presented at the IUMI annual conference earlier this month. Philip and Astrid discuss the market, the results, trends in the cargo, hull, and offshore energy markets, sustainability issues and much more.