Gard Brand Guidelines: An Arendal P&I Club of 1907, Older Marine Roots & the Codan Deal

A shipowners’ mutual from the south coast.

Gard began in Arendal, on Norway’s south coast, in 1907. English Wikipedia names the original body Assuranceforeningen Gard, a P&I club, and says Arendal was then an important shipping centre; it adds that the club was driven partly by owners of sailing ships who did not want to subsidise the liabilities of steamship owners. Gard marks its anniversary on 9 October. In a note published on 11 October 2017 for its 110th year, it described a journey “from being the provider of a single product for a local set of clients” to a global organisation covering the whole range of marine insurance. Store norske leksikon, the Norwegian encyclopedia, describes it as a mutual owned by its customers, the shipowners, with its head office in Arendal.

Its marine-insurance roots are older than the club. English Wikipedia traces them to Æolus, set up in 1867 and later part of the Storebrand group. Gard itself reaches further back: on 18 August 2017 it marked 250 years since a forerunner of its marine and energy business, a fire-insurance institution for buildings, was set up by royal decree in Copenhagen in 1767. That body moved its head office to Oslo in 1814, took the name Norges Brannkasse in 1912, became part of UNI in 1984 and joined Storebrand in 1991, Gard says.

The war years left a mark. English Wikipedia says the Second World War hit the shipowners insured with Gard hard, and that by 1945 its membership had shrunk considerably. The sources used for this guide do not say how Gard operated during the occupation of 1940–1945. After the war, the same article says, two things shaped its growth: the expansion of the Norwegian fleet between 1950 and 1970, and a membership that became steadily more international.

A mutual with a commercial arm.

Gard works in two ways. Its P&I business — liability cover for shipowners, operators and charterers — is written through the mutual, which English Wikipedia describes as a structure in which the buyers of the insurance are effectively the insurer. Hull cover and other property and income covers are written on a commercial basis, and the same article says the earnings from that business are kept for the benefit of the mutual members. Norwegian Wikipedia, citing Gard’s 2016 corporate governance manual, names Gard P. & I. (Bermuda) Ltd. as the parent of a group that includes Assuranceforeningen Gard, Gard Marine & Energy Limited and Gard AS, the name commonly used for the company in Norway.

Its website groups its products by client: shipowners, charterers and traders, offshore contractors, energy exploration and production, shipbuilding and renewables. English Wikipedia adds builders’ risks cover for ships under construction, cover for small craft such as ferries, tugs and fishing vessels, and defence cover for legal costs in establishing and defending claims.

The marine and energy side grew through acquisitions. Gard says the marine and energy business of the insurer If, itself formed from a merger of Storebrand and Skandia interests, became part of Gard in 2000; Store norske leksikon dates Gard’s takeover of If’s corresponding business to 2005, and English Wikipedia gives October 2003. In July 2024 Gard announced the purchase of Codan’s global marine and energy portfolio. Gard says the deal was finalised on 3 March 2025, and Baird Maritime reported on 5 March 2025 that it was complete, with a Danish branch, new offices in Copenhagen and Aarhus and more than 50 specialists joining Gard. Gard says a large part of that portfolio consists of offshore wind projects.

Its reach is wide. Gard says it has staff of more than 30 nationalities across 15 offices; English Wikipedia lists them from Arendal, Oslo and Bergen to Athens, Imabari, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, London and New York. Its Japan branch dates from October 1991, when, Gard says, it received a licence from Japan’s Financial Services Agency, although it had insured Japanese owners since the 1970s. On 12 November 2025 Gard announced that its chief executive, Rolf Thore Roppestad, had been appointed Chair of the International Group of P&I Clubs at the group’s annual general meeting in London the day before.

Mutual insurers in public.

P&I clubs are mutual associations: the shipowners and charterers they insure are also their members, and so, in effect, their owners. Store norske leksikon, the Norwegian encyclopedia, dates the first British club to 1855; clubs such as Gard and Skuld are members of the International Group of P&I Clubs, whose members work together on reinsurance and shared industry matters. Their core product is liability cover, written alongside hull cover and freight, demurrage and defence cover.

Because their customers are their members, the clubs present themselves less like retailers and more like institutions. Their websites are built around working documents: rules and statutes, guidance to the rules, member circulars, lists of entered vessels, correspondents and ports, and office maps that show where claims handlers sit, from Oslo and London to Piraeus, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Annual reports and renewal pages carry the financial side of the story, and loss-prevention guides, posters and articles are offered to members as guidance.

Photography in this category tends to show ships, harbours and ports as the clubs publish them, while names and symbols lean on the sea and on long histories. Some clubs explain their marks in public: Skuld, for example, sets out its anchor, its horizon line and its red on its own website. Where a club publishes no such details, and in every case for colour values, the palettes in these guides — navies, teals, greys, reds and golds — are our own interpretations rather than official codes.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each club: when and where it was founded, how it is owned and governed, what it says about its cover and its offices, and which mergers or acquisitions have shaped it, with dates. Claims that rest only on a club’s own pages are marked as the club’s own word.

A brand built from rules, guidance and a home town.

Gard’s public face is a working library rather than a showroom. Its website leads with circulars, its rules, statutes and guidance, a searchable list of entered vessels, a list of ports and a stream of insight articles; its Guidance to the Rules is the document English Wikipedia cites to explain how the club system works. In June 2017 Gard launched a series of posters for ships’ crews, in A3 size and for download only; it said the first set had 15 posters, pairing short messages with images of real shipboard operations, and the series now runs across themes such as people, navigation, cargo, fuels and cyber security.

Its scale is described by others in plain terms. Store norske leksikon calls Gard one of the largest in the world in its field. Its membership is international, but the brand keeps its Norwegian origin in view: its anniversaries are dated from Arendal, and Store norske leksikon still gives the town as its head office. Its sponsorship page says the company focuses on marine-related causes as well as education and training, culture, sports and the environment, and makes corporate donations twice a year, mainly to Norwegian non-profit organisations.

For a design guide, Gard shows how a mutual insurer can build an identity from its rules, its guidance and a long local history. Compare Skuld, which Store norske leksikon names with Gard as Norway’s P&I insurers, and DNV, the Norwegian classification society. For this guide we use a harbour navy and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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