An act of violence or hijacking committed for private ends against a ship, covered sometimes by the cargo policy and sometimes by war risks cover.
Piracy is defined in international law by the Montego Bay convention as an act of violence committed for private ends, by the crew of one ship against another ship, on the high seas or outside the jurisdiction of any state. That narrow definition excludes attacks in territorial waters, classified as armed robbery at sea, a distinction of no practical consequence to the victim but decisive for naval jurisdiction and for policy drafting. In insurance, piracy occupies an unstable place: it is covered by the all risks cargo form, from which it is not excluded, while the hull policy excludes it and sends it to war risks cover, so that a single event can fall to two different markets depending on the interest insured. Ransoms are handled by dedicated policies, which reimburse the payment, the negotiator's fees and delivery costs, and the payment itself runs up against sanctions regimes where the group is designated. The problem solved is an intermittent peril, geographically concentrated, whose frequency can swing within months in a way annual rating does not track.
The hijacking of the tanker Sirius Star by Somali pirates on November 15, 2008, with two million barrels aboard, ended in January 2009 against a ransom of about three million dollars; the Somali peak of 2011, with 237 attacks attributed to those groups by the International Maritime Bureau, pushed the Gulf of Aden into the listed high risk area and took the war premium from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars per transit.
piraterie, détournement de navire