Report on the 590th Meeting of the Board of Directors 24 November 2015 No.15-011 Download PDF (287KB) To the Members The 590th Meeting of the Association’s Board of Directors was held in Tokyo on 24th November 2015 to review open policy years, to decide on the 2016 renewal and to adopt proposed alterations to the Rules of the Association. (The decisions made thereon are set out in part II.)   Introduction While domestic and overseas economies are still experiencing uncertainty, a slow improvement is expected in Japan, resulting from an expansion in economic autonomy. In the shipping industry, our Members continue to face a tough business environment where the market is not yet showing any sign of improvement. Even in such difficult conditions, as at 20 October this year the total number of vessels entered with our Association has been maintained at 4,472, across 92.14 million gross tons in the aggregate, thanks to the continued support of the Members of the Association.   Turning to the claims received by the Association, in the first half of this policy year, the loss record for ocean-going vessels (mutual entries) was good. However, some relatively large claims occurred since the second half began, and the Association will be paying close attention to their future movement. Furthermore, while the loss record for coastal vessels (Naiko Class, fixed premium entries) has continued to be comparatively stable since the 2011 policy year, the situation remains in the balance, as it does for ocean-going vessels, in the light of a relatively large claim reported in the 2015 Policy Year.   Having considered various factors essential for the management of the Association in facing the continuously challenging P&I insurance market, such as our Members’ difficult business environment, ensuring the soundness of the Association’s income and expenditure and so on, the Board has reached the decisions set out in part II below on advance call rates,supplementary c