国际船东保赔协会集团解约会费缺乏透明度

P&I release calls need transparency

要降低船东转会会费，仍需采取一些措施。 究竟是什么原因使得一项详细的、代价昂贵且耗时长达两年的反垄断调查，在没有取得实质结果的情况之下突然放弃了？

Something still needs to be done to lower the cost of changing clubs. It is tempting to view the European Commission (EC)'s decision to close an investigation into the International Group's protection-and-indemnity (P&I) cartel as nothing less than a failure by bureaucrats. 'The market investigation was not sufficiently conclusive to confirm the commission's initial concerns,' was the brief, even banal, explanation offered. But whatever the merits or demerits of the way the P&I mutuals operate, it is hard to understand how competition regulators can look at a market where the key players have not only a more than 90% market share but also a price-fixing agreement and then close an investigation without offering any real explanation of the outcome of their publicly financed work. The Commission's announcement was immediately followed by the International Group welcoming it and saying it was planning to make some amendments to the agreement between the 13 member clubs. There is certainly one stand-out issue - release calls - where there is almost a consensus that something needs to be done. The P&I clubs have moderated release-call levels but it could still cost a shipowner 75% of their annual premium to be released from liability and leave a club. The release calls levied on the three open underwriting years is a risk premium to cover the possibility that the originally estimated one will be inadequate to cover the cost of the claims. The P&I clubs will no doubt continue to evolve but maybe a push from the EC would have proved beneficial in giving impetus to change.