The roll-out of a new electronic charter party by Competitive ShipBrokers Ltd (CSBL) could provide the basis for further cooperation in the digital world, according to chief executive Pierre Aury.
Five leading members of CSBL — Arrow Shipbroking, Banchero Costa (Bancosta), Fearnleys, Ifchor and Thurlestone Shipping — have signed up to use the OceanSign software enabling them to complete charterparty signatures electronically.
The e-signature chartering solution is an indication of growing cooperation between the shipbrokers, Aury said.
He noted that the development reflects the gradual transformation of CSBL from what started out as a defensive shipbroking lobby into a grouping that is beginning to collaborate on operational matters.
CSBL was formed in 2015 by seven brokers after it became clear that the Baltic Exchange was going to be sold.
Over time, it has morphed into a grouping of 14 shipbrokers with fewer concerns about the Baltic indices but with mutual interests in other fields of shipping.
"A number of brokers realised on some subjects where they were not competing, they could team up to develop things," Aury said.
"At these levels, pooling resources to put something together is a no-brainer."
Aury noted that the traditional shipbroker practice of printing and couriering originals around the world is extremely time-consuming and expensive.
Some brokers racked up a bill of $80,000 for traditional courier schemes, which Aury said were not good for the environment.
He added that OceanSign will be independent of any one shipbroker and would use the Veracity digital platform established by classification society DNV.
He said that would provide a safe way of enabling documentation to be transferred, signed and stored in a cloud-based application.
"We have done this because there were real savings at stake," he said.
Substantial offering
CSBL would slowly add features to the platform to build a more substantial digital offering, Aury said.
"We have other projects now, so CSBL might become more than a talking shop and more a place where people say look at digitalisation of the market."
He said one possibility might be to pool all of the fixtures of CSBL shipbrokers in an anonymous way.
These currently add up to more than 30,000 charterparties per year.
"That’s a huge database with real spot fixtures," Aury said.
The cooperation could prove a means by which some shipbrokers could compete with digital projects being established by larger shipbroking houses.
That includes Sea/, the software platform launched by Clarksons to fully digitalise the process of trading vessels commercially launched through its subsidiary, Maritech Services.
