Watercraft · Hawaii
Hawaii has a unique market for boat and marine insurance.
Cennairus is a licensed wholesale insurance broker: retail agents send us the accounts their own markets cannot place, stay the agent of record, and we take each account to the markets on our panel of 145 carriers that write it. One boat submission covers hull physical damage, watercraft liability, medical payments, uninsured boater, on-water towing and personal effects, plus wreck removal and fuel-spill liability where the vessel calls for it. Value matters more than length: past a market’s value or age rule, the underwriter usually wants a current survey. Cennairus takes it to a marine specialty market.
Start a submission
A few fields about the vessel — we take it to a marine market and come back with real terms. No obligation.
Photo: Eric Joseph / Pexels
Without a marine market in-house, the boat gets pushed onto a homeowners endorsement or turned away, and neither one keeps the household. One more market is the difference between placing the account and handing it to somebody else.
The same watercraft submission covers a jet ski and a cabin cruiser — hull physical damage, watercraft liability, medical payments, uninsured boater, on-water towing, personal effects, and wreck removal and fuel-spill liability where the vessel calls for it. No separate application per hull size, and no commercial form on a pleasure boat.
A marine placement pays you the way the rest of your book does — settled monthly through your wallet, with Cennairus standing as the wholesale broker on the file. The client stays your agency’s client.
Year, make, length, engine type and horsepower, hull material, where it is moored and where it is actually run — plus the hull value, and whether you are asking for agreed value or actual cash value. The operator’s experience and loss history count as much as the boat does. A prior policy or a bill of sale covers most of it.
The submission is sent to a specialty market that prices hulls every day. Their underwriters read it and come back by hand, on their own timing, the way marine has always worked. On an older or higher-value vessel they will ask for the survey.
Terms and the market’s own proposal, a question about the survey or the navigation area, or a market that passed. Your agency keeps the client either way.
The hull, the water it is allowed to be in, and the months it is supposed to be out of it — that is what a marine underwriter actually reads.
Yes. Hawaii is one of the states we work. Send the account and it is measured against every market with appetite for it in Hawaii.
Personal watercraft up to cabin cruisers and small yachts, on one submission. Value matters more than length: past a market’s value threshold the underwriter wants a survey and a firmer answer on where the boat is kept.
Above a market’s age or value rule, usually yes — a current out-of-water condition-and-value survey. Below it, usually not. Send the most recent one you have even if it has expired; it tells the underwriter more than the application does.
Yes. The policy names where the vessel may be operated, and running outside that area is outside the policy, not a coverage argument. Tell us the real cruising area, including the one trip a year somewhere else.
The moment a vessel carries paying passengers or cargo it leaves the pleasure forms. That is a commercial marine placement — ocean marine and cargo — a different submission with a different market. Say so up front.
Not by itself. Grounding, storm damage and theft read differently to a marine underwriter, and so does what was done afterwards. Send the loss history with the submission rather than letting the market find it late.
Commission on the marine placement is yours, settled monthly through your wallet. Cennairus stands as the wholesale broker on the file, and the client relationship stays with your agency.
The vessel, where it is kept, where it runs, and the last survey if there is one. We take it to a market that underwrites hulls for a living.
