The Baltic Exchange's new escrow service for member deals has gone live on Monday.
It aims to hold deposits for ship sale transactions.
The service is run out of Singapore and led by Chris Jones, the Exchange's head of Asia and a former sale and purchase shipbroker with over 40 years of experience.
Based on a new Baltic escrow form, it will be subject to the Singapore Exchange's (SGX) detailed compliance and money laundering procedures.
OCBC Bank will be providing the joint deposit account.
To use the service the buyer needs to be a member, although there are plans to expand this in the future to support transactions where the seller or broker is a member.
Jones said: "There's been a good deal of interest in this service since we initially announced it in April. We hope to expand this service to dispute-related issues such as bunkers in the near future."
The service costs $5,000 per side.
