UK insurers face claims of up to $3bn from Baltimore bridge disaster

Insurance claims for damage to the bridge alone could reach $1.2bn, with further potential liabilities of $350m to $700m for wrongful deaths, analysts say

The bridge collapsed after being struck by a container ship, the Singapore-flagged Dali, sending vehicles into the water and threatening chaos at one of the most important ports on the US east coast.

Insurers face claims of as much as $3bn (2.8bn) following Tuesday’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, with firms on the Lloyd’s of London market most exposed, analysts said.

Insurance claims for damage to the bridge alone could reach $1.2bn, analysts at Barclays said in a research note, predicting further potential liabilities of $350m to $700m for wrongful deaths and yet-to-be-determined amounts for business interruptions while access to the city’s port is blocked.

“While the incident still has to be investigated, we believe it has potential to become a significant insurance claim, particularly in the marine market,” said the analysts. 

The bridge collapsed after being struck by a container ship, the Singapore-flagged Dali, sending vehicles into the water and threatening chaos at one of the most important ports on the US east coast.

Insurance risk will be spread across firms due to it being syndicated, the Barclays analysts said, noting the policy was led by Axa. Other major marine reinsurers include Hannover Re, Swiss Re, Munich Re, and RenaissanceRe. 

The significant involvement of Lloyd’s of London may make smaller London market reinsurers comparatively more exposed, they added.

The owner of the ship could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims, but legal experts said there was a path for reducing liability under an obscure 19th-century law once invoked by the owner of the Titanic to limit its payout for the 1912 sinking.

The Dali ship is owned by the Singapore-based Grace Ocean and was chartered by the shipping giant Maersk.

The company could face a bevy of lawsuits from multiple directions, including from the bridge’s owner and the families of six workers who were presumed dead after a search in the Patapsco River. 

But an 1851 law could lower the exposure to tens of millions of dollars by capping the ship owner’s liability at how much the vessel is worth after the crash, plus any earnings it collected from carrying the freight on board, said Martin Davies, the director of Tulane University’s Maritime Law Center. 

• Bloomberg