JLT Aerospace, a division of brokers Jardine Lloyd Thompson, has made its first foray into the space insurance market after jointly winning the mandate alongside Marsh to place insurance for future Arabsat satellites.
The award is quite a coup for JLT…
JLT Aerospace, a division of brokers Jardine Lloyd Thompson, has made its first foray into the space insurance market after jointly winning the mandate alongside Marsh to place insurance for future Arabsat satellites.
The award is quite a coup for JLT with Aon (and now subsequently ISB) having traditionally been Arabsat’s broker.
Indeed, Aon’s previous relationship with Arabsat may have been key to the contract given that JLT Aerospace’s global head of space Peter Elson was formerly a senior managing director at Aon.
SatelliteFinance understands that JLT and Marsh will definitely place insurance for the next two Arabsat satellites, 5C and 6B, and then be in line to place any potential future birds.
Both Arabsat 5C and Arabsat 6B are being built by EADS Astrium and Thales Alenia Space as part of a turnkey contract with Arabsat and will be launched by Arianespace in the third quarter of 2011 and second half of 2012 respectively. The brokers are expected to come to market with a launch plus one package placement for the two spacecraft towards the end of this year.
According to one broker, given the somewhat ‘plain vanilla’ specifications of the two GEO satellites, Arabsat will be looking at getting a rate of under 10%.
Following its first contract win, JLT Aerospace is now eyeing up further potential mandates and plan to do so on its own in some cases. Its approach, however, is likely to be a cautious, building on previous relationships.
