Bespoke insurance, known in the market as specialty or speciality insurance, is cover written for risks no standard policy is designed for: works of art, vessels, aircraft, homes abroad and the singular risks of enterprises. The lines below are set out as they are understood, whether the owner is a person or a company.
Understanding
Most insurance is written in volume: many similar risks, priced together. Specialty insurance is the opposite. Each risk is assessed on its own, by underwriters who know the class, and the policy is written around it. Much of it is placed in the London market, where Lloyd’s has underwritten singular risks since the seventeenth century.
The same line can concern a person or a company. A yacht may be privately owned or commercially operated; a collection may hang in a home or in a museum. What makes a risk bespoke is not who owns it but that it cannot be understood from a table.
The Lines
Each line has its own vocabulary, its own specialists and its own record. They are set out here as subjects of understanding.
Fine Art Insurance
Works of art, collections, rare books and private libraries, jewellery, watches and specie. The class turns on valuation, provenance, condition, transit, loans to exhibition and where objects are kept, including in storage and freeports.
Yacht & Marine Insurance
Hull and machinery, protection and indemnity, crew and cruising area for private yachts; hull and cargo for vessels in commercial operation. Flag, registration and the waters sailed shape the terms.
Private Jet & Aviation Insurance
Hull and liability cover for privately owned aircraft, and for aircraft in commercial operation. The distinction between owner, operator and management company is central to how the risk is written.
Second Home Insurance
A holiday or second home in another country raises its own questions: periods without occupation, letting, local building and liability law, and whether the country requires cover to be issued locally.
Commercial Insurance
The risks of owner-managed and family enterprises: directors’ and officers’ liability, professional indemnity, cyber, property and business interruption. The class follows the enterprise, wherever it operates.
Other Specialty Risks
Risks that belong to no single class: kidnap and ransom, political risk, event and contingency, and objects in transit between countries. The market writes them one at a time.
LIBRO does not underwrite, sell, arrange or advise on insurance, and nothing here is an offer, an invitation, a recommendation or advice. This page is general information, written for understanding. Insurance is regulated, and questions of cover belong with a licensed insurer or broker in the relevant jurisdiction.
