tigerlab Unveils Specialist Marine Cargo Platform to Automate High-Volume Shipment Declarations

Insurance technology provider tigerlab has launched tigerlab Brokerage, a dedicated management platform designed to address the specific administrative complexities of marine cargo insurance. By prioritising high-volume shipment declarations and multi-currency financial transactions over standard policy administration, the platform enables international brokers and MGAs to standardise global operations and automate regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions.

What was announced

The launch of tigerlab Brokerage marks a shift away from general-purpose broker management systems, which often struggle with the granular data requirements of the marine and logistics sectors. Developed in collaboration with a global insurance brokerage, the platform is specifically engineered to handle the "open cover" structures common in marine cargo, where a single policy may involve thousands of individual shipment declarations annually.

The platform is currently live in five countries, with plans to standardise operations across a network spanning more than 30 countries. It integrates shipment declarations, invoicing, and insurer reporting into a single workflow, which tigerlab claims eliminates the need for redundant data entry. A core feature of the system is its financial architecture, which utilises four connected accounting ledgers to track client premiums, insurer payables, broker commissions, and insurance taxes simultaneously. This structure is intended to reduce the manual reconciliation burden that typically arises from multi-currency international business.

Compliance is also integrated directly into the transaction lifecycle. Sanctions screening and customer due diligence (CDD) are embedded within the binding process, ensuring that required checks are completed before cover is officially granted. For firms managing delegated authority, tigerlab Brokerage can be paired with the company’s existing tigersuite platform to provide additional tools for vessel tracking, referral rules, and dedicated shipment portals.

"Managing the policy is only part of the job. The real administrative burden comes from processing high volumes of shipment declarations and associated transactions, as well as the reporting behind them."

Holm Schimanski, partner and chief AI officer at tigerlab

The companies involved

Tigerlab is an insurance technology company that provides core software solutions designed to modernise the insurance value chain. The firm’s primary offering, tigersuite, is a modular platform that supports various aspects of the insurance lifecycle, including underwriting, policy management, and claims. By focusing on modularity, the company aims to replace or augment legacy systems that often lack the flexibility required for modern, digital-first insurance products.

The company operates in a competitive insurtech landscape, positioning itself as a specialist vendor for firms that require more than "out-of-the-box" functionality. The appointment of Holm Schimanski as Chief AI Officer reflects the firm’s focus on integrating advanced automation and data processing into its core architecture. While tigerlab serves a global market, this latest development highlights a specific focus on the transport and logistics sector, where the intersection of complex international regulation and high-frequency transactional data creates a significant "design gap" in traditional insurance software.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has previously explored tigerlab’s philosophy regarding the fundamental architecture of the insurance industry. In an exclusive interview for The Insurtech Magazine titled EXCLUSIVE: ‘Rebuilding insurance’ – Holm Schimanski, Tigerlab in ‘The Insurtech Magazine’, published in July 2021, Schimanski discussed the necessity of rethinking how insurance technology is built from the ground up. The discussion focused on the limitations of legacy systems and the need for a more agile, data-centric approach to "rebuilding" the industry's digital foundations. This earlier coverage underscores the company's long-term strategy of moving away from generic administrative tools toward specialised, high-performance infrastructure for complex risk categories.

What this means from an insurtech perspective

From an insurance perspective, this announcement highlights a growing tension between generalist core-system vendors and niche-specific platforms. Marine cargo is a notoriously paper-heavy and spreadsheet-reliant sector; by building a system that treats a shipment declaration—rather than the policy—as the primary data unit, tigerlab is challenging the traditional underwriting and brokerage workflow. This move puts pressure on incumbent vendors whose legacy architectures cannot easily accommodate the "four-ledger" accounting required for complex international tax and commission structures. For brokers and MGAs, the gain is operational efficiency and improved loss-ratio accuracy through better data hygiene, but it also raises questions about how easily these specialist "sub-ledgers" can integrate with a carrier’s broader, often antiquated, back-office systems.