What Marine Cargo Underwriters Actually Look at When Pricing Your Shipment

Most quotes you see for marine cargo insurance are not from underwriters. They are from intermediaries (often a freight forwarder taking a commission on a marine open cover the forwarder has placed in their own name) marking up the underwriter's rate. The placement market view in Singapore is consistent: forwarder MOC (marine open cover) markup commonly runs 3 to 5 times the underwriter's net rate on common cargo flows.

That is the first thing to understand if you have ever wondered why two quotes for the same shipment differ by a factor of four. The second thing is the underwriter's actual decision logic, which has almost nothing to do with the markup chain and everything to do with how the cargo, the route, the conveyance, the packing, and your claims experience combine in their pricing model. For the buyer-facing primer on the rate-percentage and minimum-premium mechanics, see how marine cargo insurance pricing works; this article goes inside the underwriter's decision and is the deeper companion piece.

The five factors that actually price a marine cargo placement

Underwriters at Lloyd's syndicates, regional company markets, and specialist facilities all look at variants of the same five inputs.