Topics in this article
- Harald Baum knows his ship even in his sleep
- A milestone for pleasure craft insurance
- Pantaenius relies on its own salvage and search operations
- Harald Baum has handed over the helm to the next generation
- Skipper Baum's favourite way to sail "Round Skagen"
- A man in harmony with himself
- Childhood on the Elbe, youth on the high seas
- The Pantaenius Chronicle
His invitation card for his 80th birthday in August 2020 was adorned with an old photo. In black and white, a tall blond man with a jacket and tie on a scooter: the young employee of the insurance company Pantaenius, Harald Baum, on the move. I looked at it for a long time. And imagined the photo next to it of today's eight-storey Pantaenius headquarters on Hamburg's Magellan Terraces. It takes more than half a century to get from photo A to photo B in life, from a small insurance broker's errand boy to the head of the largest yacht insurance company, so to speak. And it takes more than the power of a Vespa. It takes character, brains and a fighter's heart. Just like good skippers have. Harald Baum is just such a guy.
He is even someone who knows how to wrap up journalists - or, to put it more nicely, make them happy: on 14 June 2003, the regatta started from Newport in Rhode Island, USA, to Cuxhaven and Hamburg. Day after day, regatta participant and sailing book author Svante Domizlaff sent reports from the sea via satellite for the "Hamburger Abendblatt" newspaper. Every day, the newspaper cleared almost a page for the column and everything related to the race. The readers were happy. And when the affair was over, Harald Baum, at the time chairman of the cruiser section of the German Sailing Association, presented the Abendblatt with his organisation's media award for its special reporting. He had quickly invented it especially for this purpose.
The visible expression of this honour was a painting by the Hamburg painter Hinnerk Bodendieck. It shows a regatta boat on a marvellous stormy voyage. I, then editor-in-chief of the "Abendblatt", was thrilled. I still enjoy looking at it today.
Harald Baum knows his ship even in his sleep
I experienced how the skipper Baum acts when I sailed with him for YACHT in 2010. He jumps out of his bunk at half past six and feels his ship. "Did you hear the bubbling?" Skipper Baum shakes his young boatman awake. But before he can get going, the old man kneels in front of the small hatch behind which the coarse filter for the refrigerator's heat exchanger is installed, unscrews the lid, takes out a quarter of a pound of seaweed and something else he calls a "half jellyfish", one of the white ones. And into the bin it goes. It has worked. The pump no longer runs dry. Silence in the ship.
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Anyone who knows their boat well and for a long time, as he does, has a direct line from the ear to the centre of attention. They can hear even when they are asleep. And can act without having to think for long. Undine Baum laughs at this point and remembers that her husband had stashed countless screwdrivers, pliers, spanners and all kinds of other tools and spare parts under his bunk on the "Elan".
Foreman of the "angry young people"
Always ready. With him, she knows to this day, nothing can happen to you. Both as a private individual and as a businessman. His employees and family all know that they can always rely on him.
Baum, Harald, is someone who has many miles in his wake. Especially as an entrepreneur. In this field, you can call it that: a life's work. After his apprenticeship in Bern, he started working for a small insurance agency in Hamburg. It was already called Pantaenius at the time. The owner was soon looking for a successor. His eyes fell on the young Baum. In his very first year, premium income rose from 250,000 to 1.5 million marks. Mainly thanks to commercial acquisitions, which began with the Hamburg civil engineering firms Gustav Sauerland and Otto Dörner.
And so it says in the company chronicle: After three years, Baum is a junior partner and shakes up the Federal Association of German Insurance Brokers. As the foreman of the "angry young people" (association president Oswald Hübener), he successfully calls for such revolutionary things as joint advertising, a statutory regulation for new members and compulsory financial loss liability insurance. Harald Baum himself says: "In 1965, brokers earned 20 per cent of the premium volume. He had to pay rent and an assistant from this. There was hardly anything left over."
A milestone for pleasure craft insurance
In 1970, Baum, now 30, bought the company outright. The first thing he did - running a boat and a business are two sides of the same coin for him - was to get into yacht insurance. Undine Baum can tell the story as if it were yesterday: "When I met my husband at the age of 25, we were sitting with his company in Hamburg's Chilehaus. A few square metres with a curtain in front of it. After 5 pm, I was on the phone until 8 pm. At some point he said to me: 'You, Undine, I know where I can go. I want to do ship insurance. 'Yes', I say, 'then off you go'."
When the yacht fleet of his small home harbour Teufelsbrück, including the wooden dinghy of a good friend, burned down in the barn storage on the Elbe the winter before, Baum had noticed directly that the insurance companies refused to pay for boats. He and two lawyer friends drew up new insurance conditions together. They invented yacht hull insurance with replacement value insurance - a milestone for pleasure boat insurance. There had never been a fixed rate before. Anyone who lost their boat had to reckon with absurd time and residual value discounts. He thus established a completely new type of yacht insurance. The breakthrough came in 1973, at the forerunner of the Hanseboot exhibition.
The slogan "Pantaenius - whatever you want can come" becomes a catchphrase
An insurance broker's stand was something new. "We did it, and suddenly the skippers found someone to talk to," says Harald Baum. And as his wife explains, it went like this: "'You look nice,' he said to me. 'You're going to stand in front of our stand and hand out our brochures. And when visitors hold them in their hands, you send them over to our table. We then tell people how their boat should be insured." Harald Baum adds: "When the trade fair was over, we had our first 1,000 customers."
The slogan "Pantaenius - come what may" becomes a catchphrase in the yachting scene. Years later, everything sounds so easy. But it couldn't have been easy. With the "fixed rate", the company now had an economically viable element, which was even supplemented by a second aspect in marketing: When taking out policies and in the event of a claim, customers always had to deal with their personal broker and not with the large organisation of an insurance juggernaut - a state of affairs that they rewarded with customer loyalty.
Separate department for the main causes
But the role of broker also harboured a great danger for the company. As soon as the loss ratio of boats insured through the broker rose towards 50 per cent, the insurers who had to cover the losses became nervous. As a result, during the 1980s there was a growing risk that the insurance companies would terminate their co-operation with the broker - an existential threat that became ever greater in the years that followed. Harald Baum and one of his leading employees took action. They used one of the first computers, an IBM machine that was barely the size of a cupboard. They had it fed with all the data on which the customer contracts and claims were based. And the machine delivered: One per cent of the insured caused 80 per cent of the claims!
It quickly became clear which adjustments needed to be made in order to avoid unnecessary burdens and reduce the claims ratio. Efficiency in this area is also the best way to keep premiums stable for policyholders. Complex damage caused by natural disasters on the one hand and more frequent theft of yachts on the other were the main causes of total losses. In other words, the worst-case scenario for insurers. In 1992, Pantaenius therefore outsourced the processing of accumulation claims and the search for stolen yachts to a separate department.
Pantaenius relies on its own salvage and search operations
Pantaenius employees became detectives on site. This was an innovation in the insurance industry that helped to significantly reduce the claims ratio, i.e. the claims that had to be paid by the insurance companies. A separate department was set up in 1992 for this endeavour.
In German, it would bear the rather peaceful name "Schadenservice im Seeverkehr". In fact, it bore the English name "MCS Marine Claims Service". It was to develop into the third economically important element of Pantaenius. The remit of the newly created company quickly developed beyond general claims management. The company acquired its own salvage equipment. Anyone who wanted to find out about the consequences of the Baltic Sea storm surge of 20 October 2023 for German and Danish ports on YouTube, for example, would find that the most extensive reports were not posted by traditional media, but by Pantaenius employees - another result of claims management.
Harald Baum has handed over the helm to the next generation
The first 1,000 customers from the exhibition stand at the first Hanseboot have now grown to more than 100,000 customers around the world. The company, which has long since also specialised in corporate insurance and the property sector, has branches in Europe and Australia. A lot of work has just been put into modernising the Greek branch. Over 400 employees work on the floors of the headquarters in Hamburg's HafenCity and at the Kiel, Eisenach, Düsseldorf and Munich locations. In 2018, Harald Baum was honoured as "Family Entrepreneur of the Year" for his entrepreneurial life's work. Anyone who speaks to him about such things gets the impression that it's all rather secondary. In fact, he has only ever done what he thinks is a good thing. And so, a few years ago, he handed over the management of the company to the next generation: his children, siblings Anna Schroeder, Daniel Baum and Martin Baum.
There are remarkable parallels between the life of the businessman Baum and the life of the skipper. Character, intellect, a fighter's heart and ultimately more and more experience - qualities that drive success in different and perhaps not so different worlds. In February 2020, Baum, who is Commodore of the Hamburg Sailing Club, was honoured with the "Lifetime Award" from the German Offshore Owners Association.
He's someone from the coast. Someone everyone can rely on and for whom a handshake still counts."
Skipper Baum's favourite way to sail "Round Skagen"
Almost as a child, he sailed a dinghy that he had restored himself. In his mid-twenties, he was co-skipper and then skipper on the cruiser/racer "Diana". After marrying his wife Undine, they bought a Swan 44, the first "Elan". The family travelled to the Caribbean on this boat and took part in several regattas in Newport and off Bermuda. This boat also won the European Swan Championship with 80 participating yachts. In 1989, the family became owners of a Swan 48, Harald Baum's dream boat, his second "Elan".
He chose the "Round Skagen" regatta, which has been sponsored by Pantaenius since 1994, as his favourite route. In 1973, he achieved the speed record of 55 hours and one minute with the "Diana". A benchmark that remained unbroken for 27 years and was only beaten by Dr Klaus Murmann on "Uca".
Prototype of the Hamburg self-made man
Harald Baum, someone from the coast. Someone on whom everyone relies and "where the handshake still counts", according to his wife. The archetypal Hamburg self-made man who developed a small agency into an international insurance company. Someone who has helped shape regatta and cruising sailing for decades. What makes a man live his passion for the sea for a lifetime? Professionally and privately. What is such a man like on board? What drives him?
Baum sails his "Elan" on our weekend that October from Glücksburg to Wedel, from the Flensburg Fjord to the Elbe. Just a transfer to winter storage, an annual two-day trip. He has completely different journeys astern, longer, tougher ones. Is that enough to get to know the owner, the guy?
"Sitting on the edge, watching the water gurgle under the leeboard, that's the best thing for me"
We've already read about the "Elan". The Swan 48, 16 metres across, built in 1973, a boat that should have the patina of age, but looks as good as new. It is unusual for a regatta sailor to remain loyal to his boat for so long. He builds, upgrades, develops. There is a close bond between the skipper and his boat. Why does he collect regatta silver like his grandchildren collect Panini pictures? Because the boat sails under particularly favourable conditions? More likely because the skipper is a sailor through and through.
Sailing dreams in winter
Still in Glücksburg harbour, we have breakfast at seven o'clock in the morning in the mess room of the "Elan". The visitor's gaze and concentration glide from the table to the carved and coloured wooden picture hanging on the forward bulkhead. It shows a caravel under full sail heading for an exotic coast. Two women sit between the lush greenery on the rocks on the shore, seen from behind and in half profile. Their posture radiates happy hope. And their flesh-coloured splendour is well done by the carver. "When you're at sea for a fortnight, just with friends on board, and then you look at this picture, the women start to move," says Harald Baum.
"Sitting on the edge, watching the water gurgle under the leeboard, that's the best thing for me," he says later, as we leave the outer fjord behind us and head south. "I dream of white bubble streaks on blue, grey and sometimes black in winter when I haven't been on board for a few months," he says. Takes a break. Lifts his gaze. Sees a rolling (almost) stormy sea with spray on the crests and a long back brushed by the wind. "Tell me about it, the Baltic Sea is not a high seas area."
We are running at 8.27 knots, the wind gauge is at 7 Beaufort. 12.15 pm, we reef. "Can't you see that the mainsail is still far too bulbous?" yells the skipper, "pull the slack out of the sail and put the reefing line through!" The nock of the main boom is over the rail. We look at the skipper. "Watch out," he says, climbs onto the top of the railing and balances to pull the slack through.
A man in harmony with himself
The skipper is 70 at this point - and pure adrenalin. 1 p.m., Damp abeam. The lakes roll away to leeward in long lanes. "You have to think about what this ship has been through with us," muses Harald Baum. Around the Mediterranean at the beginning. Cyprus, Lebanon, Greece, Albania, then back in a tough trip across the Bay of Biscay. Before the DaimlerChrysler North Atlantic Challenge, back across the Bay of Biscay to the Bermudas, then to New York. On the last "leg" of the regatta, in the North Sea, the "Elan" finished sixth overall. Some of those who were there at the time still remember how the skipper bounced through the quayside warehouse in Hamburg at the sailing party immediately after returning from the North Atlantic regatta, exactly where the Elbphilharmonie concert hall has long since risen. Not a trace of fatigue in his bones, satisfaction in his eyes and a mischievous look on his face. A man in harmony with himself. It seems as if "Elan" is less a boat name than the skipper's personality programme.
Canal lock in Kiel. A whole crowd of steamers. Their screws grind slowly as they try to hold position. We weave our way through and enter the lock chamber without stopping. The "Elan" is firmly on the port side and Baum is already on her feet, on her way to the lock keepers. Handshake and back again. The day turns dark grey and wet.
At some point, we turn into the Gieselau Canal. Shivering in our oilskins, the neon lights on the jetties to the left and right seem as cosy as a flickering open fire. Rain pelts down on the deck.
A pot of rice is soon steaming on the table in the mess hall, with a pot of goulash next to it. Closing time in the canal. It's off to bed late. But don't rest just five minutes longer than the others the next morning. Then, as soon as your head pops up in the companionway, the old man comments: "Ah, the sleeper's already here too."
Childlike enthusiasm in experienced eyes
The diesel hums along at 2,300 rpm until we reach the Brunsbüttel lock. The rain is still falling. Then we finally reach open water. There is this one moment on board a sailing boat - when you pull the stop cable and the engine stops humming. That exact moment when the sails catch the wind. That moment of transition from one dimension to the other. Silence envelops you. A large invisible hand reaches under your ship. It carries it forward, with you and everything on it. The feeling is similar to what jumpers experience when their parachute opens.
Baum has probably seen it a hundred times, and yet his face still reflects his enthusiasm for the moment. We look up at the mast and the sails, which draw a power from the sky that no future generation will ever be able to use up.
Childhood on the Elbe, youth on the high seas
"We're on the Elbe," says Baum, recalling images from his youth. "Boys, this is my home. Back there is the Brammer Bank. Then comes Pagensand. And now the Dwarsloch. I've been there since I was a boy. I had dinghy sickness. Whenever we were moored somewhere with our boat, I had to get into the dinghy and set off. Once I got as far as a tideway. Once I was in, the tide went out and the water drained away. I couldn't get out again. I sat there for eight hours. My father waited. That was in 1952. I thought I was going to get a beating. But when I came back, my father just said: 'Well, were you scared?"
Wischhafen abeam. There used to be a berth at the shooting range. Baum talks about the black market days when he travelled with his father Erich and his brother Hans-Peter on the centreboard boat "Alibi". It had survived the war under a road bridge in Hamburger Hofweg. Baum's father knew a source for cigarettes and the kind of flint needed for old lighters. Rare in those days, hard to find. They traded their goods with farmers on the flat land down the Elbe in exchange for anything that would fill them up.
Did this awaken his business sense, his instinct for what would work? First of all, he stayed at home on the water. He had already spent his 16th birthday on a freighter. He travelled from Hamburg to Baltimore and back as a steward for his year's work at vocational school. In a drawer in his house are his seaman's logbook and his captain's certificate.
Back on the Elbe, to the "Elan": We have moored in Wedel harbour. Everyone disembarks. Baum, however, is still standing by the ship. His hand is on the pulpit. He says quietly: "Bye, mien Deern."
The Pantaenius Chronicle
The text shown here is taken from the new book published to mark the 125th anniversary of Pantaenius.
- It can be ordered online now at: shop.delius-klasing.de
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