Marine insurance is heading toward a future where cargo insurance certificates are fully digitised and standardised to meet the requirements of banks and other financial institutions, according to IUMI president Frédéric Denèfle, speaking as he opened the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) annual conference in Rotterdam this week.
Denèfle told delegates that data standards, digitalisation and artificial intelligence are already reshaping how the sector operates, and said he expected the pace to pick up rather than level off. He predicted a day, not far off, when insurers could offer standardised digital cargo certificates that satisfy both financial institutions and customers directly.
Cargo insurance certificates carry more weight than their administrative reputation suggests. Banks financing trade shipments typically require proof of cover before releasing funds or documents, and that process is still often handled manually across brokers, insurers, banks and shippers, each working from separate systems. A standard digital format, recognised uniformly by financial institutions, would strip out a step that has lagged behind the rest of trade finance's move online.
Denèfle put the case in efficiency terms rather than as a case for change for its own sake: AI will change how the sector operates, making it smarter and more efficient, but only if insurers actually adopt it rather than wait it out.
Denèfle described current conditions as broadly stable but still predominantly soft, with hull and cargo premium growth this year owing more to a weaker US dollar than to genuine rate hardening. Offshore energy, he said, remains subdued. Soft markets tend to push underwriters toward efficiency and cost as the places they can still make gains which is the ground digitisation is aimed at.
The same address tied the push to a broader set of pressures: rising war risk, new capacity competing for the same business, persistent inflation, and ongoing uncertainty around global trade. Denèfle's argument was that insurers need to be ready to underwrite tomorrow's trade routes, including new ones shaped by geopolitics, and that better data and digital infrastructure are part of keeping pace with that.
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Denèfle told delegates that despite the pace of change, the sector remained strong, agile and ready to adapt. That's a line aimed at underwriters and brokers deciding where to spend limited change budgets, as much as at the technology itself.
For brokers and insurers, the relevant question is closer to home than Rotterdam: any standardised digital certificate recognised by financial institutions would need buy-in from London market participants, given how much trade finance business runs through the City. IUMI hasn't said who would build or own that standard. But Denèfle's message was that the direction is set, whoever ends up leading it.
