Crew: Has The Regulator Got Your Back? Crewdentials Is Here To Clear Up The New Direction In 2024

There’s never a shortage of missives from regulators but Crewdentials is here to report that it seems in the past few months there’s been a focus (in a good way) on crew. 

The Cayman Maritime Authority have clarified that anyone employed on a Cayman Islands vessel needs to have an appropriate employment agreement in place. Whilst for pleasure yachts it doesn’t have to be MLC compliant, it does need to specify wages and leave and also some matters that are specific to the maritime industry such as repatriation and agreed place of return.

What’s Under The Spotlight?

PSC is also putting certification, SEAs and wage payments under the spotlight in their concentrated inspection campaign this quarter. 

In particular medical certification, training and qualifications (including refreshers) and ensuring that a flag state approved SEA is in place for all crew members.  

And finally, the Professional Yachting Association has taken aim at the plethora of training courses, particularly those aimed at junior crew, with their recommendation that they don’t waste money on courses that aren’t regulator required or IAMI accredited. 

That same news release warned of the surge in unqualified crew with fake or purchased Certificates of Competency.  This is a pretty major concern, one we are hearing of with more regularity, and which has significant safety repercussions.  What’s maybe surprising is that we also hear of qualified crew extending validity dates on qualifications, or faking a refresher course.  The reasons for this are unclear.  Potentially crew missing the fact that something has expired (or not knowing that it’s a qualification that needs refreshing); the time out of work that it takes to do the course; the cost; apathy about what benefits the refresher course brings; or maybe the unlikely chance of getting caught? 

So what should we expect of the regulators, and what do they expect of us? 

Firstly, we can and should all promote good quality and accredited training, particularly for greenies, such as Seas the Day Training’s IAMI accredited Introduction to Superyachts and Yachting Life before they spend thousands on STCWs and ENG1s

Most dispatches from regulators require some action as ignorance of a known issue won’t go down well as an excuse for non-compliance.  Given there has been a fairly common theme, I think we will see some regulatory focus on crew certification, employment terms and the due diligence that crew managers, recruiters and employers need to do.  However, due diligence is a fairly unenviable task.  Crew and career management in the yachting industry comes with some really unique challenges – including seasonality, urgent placements and relatively high turnover. There are also the added factors of a complex regulatory environment, and one with high consequences if anything goes wrong.

The process of maritime KYC (know your crew member) is reminiscent of where the financial services industry was 10 – 15 years ago with their AML/KYC compliance. 

You have multiple people doing the same task, simply collecting documents to tick a regulatory box with a lack of time and industry specific tools meaning they can’t dive deeper and actually understand risks.  

As it stands, the industry seems to be taking the brunt of having to manually verify and record qualifications.  

The IMO providing a list of white list flags, and links to the portals to verify isn’t enough, particularly as the list now sits behind a log in and is still a manual process.  Happily, advances in technology and digital identities including the Crewdentials tools for crew and service providers for certificate compliance and SEA production mean that processes are starting to be automated.  Innovation will give back time to the people with the skills and knowledge to actually make the industry safer. 

However we believe that this requires a joint effort between industry, technology and the regulators – progress in one will drive innovation in the others.  

Crewdentials helps crew stay organised and ensures maritime businesses have the right people for the right vessels.

Visit the Crewdentials website here at: https://www.crewdentials.com/

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