Construction & Engineering
Catlin began underwriting Construction and Engineering business as a standalone class in 2004 and is able to provide meaningful follow market capacity behind the lead markets in the class. Catlin has specialist teams in London, Singapore and Toronto.
Geographically Catlin focuses on Europe, Asia and North America which forms a large proportion of the income; the remainder consisting of carefully vetted projects outside these regions, more recently there have been a number of major projects from the Middle East. Target areas are as follows:
- Contractors with turnovers between USD 50m and USD 1bn
- Privately financed projects
- Single projects with contract values of between USD 25m and USD 500 million avoiding natural catastrophe areas
- Carefully selected projects in excess of USD 500 million.
The vast majority of the placements are on a quota share basis with the occasional excess of loss placement, the latter sometimes being utilised on projects with estimated contract values in excess of USD 1 billion and North America projects where the domestic carriers write on a TIV basis.
Catlin benefits from the risk engineering of the leaders, and also consults with their own independent engineering contacts on the larger risks. Preference is given to risks with substantial deductibles in order to avoid high attrition accounts and the associated claims management costs. From a period perspective Catlin can write projects up to 48 months (average 24 months) plus maintenance cover; typically being 12-24 months in addition to the construction period. In respect of annual business, the key dates for the annual programmes are the 1 January, 1 April and 1 July.
Brokers are able to see the London team in the morning on the trading floor and at the box in Lloyd’s in the afternoon.
A small proportion of the income is written through binders for niche areas such as Windpro for Wind farms.