News 18 Jan, 2024 West launches new Piracy Protection product Richard Turner Product Development This latest product is tailored to meet new patterns of piracy costs to owners, with extended coverage and emergency response expertise Download PDF We are delighted to share that today we have launched West Piracy Protection, to help owners manage the evolving threat of piracy in high-risk waters. The new product provides cover for vessels entering a War & Piracy ‘breach’ area, such as the Gulf of Aden or the Gulf of Guinea, where there is a heightened risk of vessels being seized. This innovative offering is tailored to provide insurance protection for piracy events where the traditional War policy coverage does not respond adequately to indemnify clients for the typical seizure situations that can take place in these geographic areas. This includes incidents when ships are sometimes held for just a few hours at a time. Indemnities are provided for ransoms, including loss of transit of a ransom, and the costs of response consultants and legal experts, including reputational risk expenses. Expert support is provided for employees directly impacted by the seizure. Additional coverage is available for Loss of Hire related to a seizure, and for a maximum period of 14 days after release of the vessel. This product has been developed in partnership with the Hamilton Global Specialty (“Hamilton”) underwriting platform written by Syndicate 4000 at Lloyd’s . Embedded emergency expertise is provided by Crisis24, one of the industry’s largest exclusively retained crisis response teams, and global law firm HFW, a market leader in the specialist field of piracy response. "We believe West Piracy Protection responds to the realities of the evolving piracy threat faced by owners in such locations as the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Guinea. We have seen a pattern of incidents where a vessel is hijacked for just a few hours, meaning that current market wording on Loss of Hire may no