Cargo Commodity Codes: The changes you need to know

As Australia’s largest specialist insurer, we’re always enhancing our systems and improving the user experience for brokers. That’s why we’ve updated our Cargo Commodity Codes to be more streamlined, simple and flexible.

Our Commodity Codes are ever-evolving, but Marine Protect’s Underwriting Operations Manager, Nick Aiello, gives an overview of the recent updates and how the addition of ‘common values’ are helping to create more accurate representations and assessments of the insured’s cargo goods.

“We’ve moved away from the traditional approach of scrolling through over 100 codes and attempting to pick the most relevant one from the list, hoping that it would match an insured’s exposure,” says Nick.

“Our Underwriting and Sales teams were constantly receiving phone calls and emails from our brokers unsure of which commodity to select or unable to find a relevant code, so in order to help, we’ve implemented a predictive text solution where the user is able to begin free-typing the commodity name and our system will direct them to the correct code. It’s an intuitive user experience that works in a similar manner to that we become accustomed to with Google and other search functionalities so commonly found online.”

For example, if the insured is shipping iPhones or laptops, by the time you have typed the first three letters ’iPh’ or ’lap’, our system will start directing you towards the commodity code for ’Computer Equipment Hardware/Software’.

In order to implement this we have built an extensive database of common values for each commodity code, which has increased the number of potential input variations tenfold to over 1,000 possible values.

This has created a far more efficient system that removes the guess work out of categorising the insured goods.

“The danger of insured goods that are incorrectly classified is that the policy may not be designed to cover the actual exposure, for example when the goods are ‘Temperature Controlled Foodstuffs,’ if the incorrect commodity is selected, the policy may not include the ‘Institute Frozen Food’ clauses as required by the insured.

“These updates to the selection of commodities will mean that the premiums are more accurate, the policy conditions match the exposure and quotes will only refer where absolutely necessary,” says Nick.

If you’re unable to find an appropriate option utilising the predictive text common values, we have the nation’s largest team of Marine Underwriters and dedicated Commercial team available to answer questions and help provide terms.

For more information speak to a Marine Protect expert today.