Although the conduct of marine insurance has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, there is no international convention on the subject. The International Law Association did develop in 1901 what were known as the Glasgow Marine Insurance Rules, which were designed to govern certain aspects of total losses and notices of abandonment, partial losses as to ships, the effect of unseaworthiness, and double insurance. However, they failed to gain acceptance.

The Commission of the European Communities have recently considered a Draft Council Directive on the co-ordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to insurance contracts within the Community, but have decided that it is not applicable to marine insurance contracts.

In 1964, however, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) first invited competent international organisations to examine the question of the adoption of uniform clauses for marine, land and air transport. Following the creation of a Working Group in 1968, and after careful study, assisted by 68 substantive replies received to questionnaires sent to member States of UNCTAD, the secretariat have now produced a Report on the development of a new international “legal regime”1 which will be discussed at the Marine Insurance Congress, organised by Lloyd’s of London Press, in November.

Here, the writer summarises the Report as it relates to hull insurance claims, and, since many practitioners feel it is time the Marine Insurance Act of 1906 was revised, poses the question whether it is opportune to introduce international uniformity into marine insurance contracts in a similar way that the York/Antwerp Rules now govern general average, and the Hague Rules and allied conventions apply to carriers’ liabilities.

At the time of the establishment of ocean trade on a more or less regular basis between what are now called “developing countries” and “developed market-economy countries”, ocean trade, and concurrently marine insurance, were regulated almost exclusively by colonial powers. Since also at that time the subject colonial territories had relatively few indigenously owned fleets involved in international trade on a regular basis, both insurers and shipowner assureds for the most part came from developed market-economy countries. This situation remained unchanged until the late 1940s and early 1950s when developing countries first began to own and regularly operate vessels in their foreign trades. Nevertheless, despite the growth of indigenous assureds and the emergence of marine insurance markets in developing countries, the financial predominance of the developed market insurance centres has remained, and a