Companies and Baldwin Resource Group to offer a new, on-demand marine insurance program through its global trade management solution, Trade Manager'.
When collecting data for either AMS or 10+2 security filings using Trade Manager', freight forwarders and Customs House Brokers can purchase marine insurance with the press of a button. Trade Tech has contracted with Baldwin Resource Group of Bellevue, WA, a risk management and insurance specialist, and the Chubb Group, with more than 125 years of insurance experience, to provide this value-added service to its users as part of a single source global trade management solution. The Chubb Group pays insurance claims and handles the investigation of the claim, while Baldwin Resource Group handles all associated customer service issues.
According to Bryn Heimbeck, Trade Tech's CEO, the advantages to the new insurance offering are competitive pricing and the security of knowing that shipments have been insured before sailing.
'The process of purchasing insurance is often duplicated and shippers, forwarders and brokers sometimes forget or they are too busy with other processes,' says Heimbeck. 'In this situation, the Customs broker or freight forwarder loses the opportunity to sell insurance and they are not covering the customer, which can lead to a major liability,' said Heimbeck. 'One step completely automates insurance from the bill of lading, which frees up the user's time and mitigates the risk of forgetting. It's right there at their fingertips as part of a complete application.'
At the same time, because Trade Tech's logistics software captures so much of the information critical to establishing the full chain of command for shipments, Chubb is able to offer very competitive pricing to Trade Tech clients because of the ease of conducting liability studies should an insurance claim be necessary on a Trade Tech-insured shipment. This ensures both a cost savings to Trade Tech's customers and the confidence that a claim will be handled efficiently and accurately should a problem arise with the shipment.
As the industry prepares for the mandatory 10+2 filing regulations to go into effect in January 2010, value-added services such as marine insurance packaged into a global trade management product will make it easier and faster for shippers, freight forwarders and Customs House Brokers to do business collectively, noted Heimbeck. 'By offering a suite of services, our forwarder and broker customers can work online in a single source environment connected to other services such as purchase order management, security and accounting,' he said.
Trade Manager' provides flexible shipment management and full operational features from multiple origins to multiple destinations on the same work flow platform, based on standard templates for each unique transportation event. This includes consolidation, transshipment or reconsolidation, and destination milestones.
Information flows in a collaborative fashion, with each station (origin, gateway and destination) adding incremental data to the current shipment data pool. This significantly reduces the redundant keystroking and filing inherent with manual processes such as marine insurance.
