Baltic Exchange has launched a Know-Your-Customer platform to give the maritime sector greater access to company data to support informed decision making and meet increased regulatory obligations.

KYC is a regulatory requirement in the banking and financial services sectors to ensure businesses do their due diligence on customers to prevent fraud, money laundering, and terrorism financing. With shipping a vital part of global commerce, the need to manage the risk of fraud, and compliance with regulatory sanctions has become paramount, particularly surrounding reputational management and liability issues.

Baltic Exchange launched the platform following a multi-year development project. It seeks to ensure that members and non-members can efficiently and effectively conduct KYC procedures and due diligence checks tailored to the maritime industry and beyond.

To provide the most up-to-date and relevant information available, Baltic Exchange has partnered with Moody’s, the internationally recognised financial services and risk insight platform, to utilise its extensive Orbis for Compliance database, which covers more than 445 million entries both in shipping and non-shipping, along with its Global Regulatory Information Database (GRID), which provides more than 12 million records on known or suspected corrupt private and public sector figures, fraudsters, illicit financiers, money launderers and more.

The need for an extensive and maritime-specific KYC platform has been growing in recent years owing to the global rise of sanctions compliance, anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) requirements, and operational risk management needs that companies are continually having to comply with.

“Due diligence has become an increasingly important aspect for all players in the shipping industry as they look to ensure they are aware of operational risks to their core business and drive compliance standards and practices. With vessels carrying high-value cargoes and operating across international borders, we have responded to the needs of our members to develop a KYC platform to provide critical risk data to all, including small and medium-sized companies,” said Mark Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of Baltic Exchange.

“Crucially, the launch of this platform reinforces Baltic Exchange’s position as a leading provider of critical maritime data, enabling our members to make more informed decisions and mitigate any risks,” he added.

The Baltic Exchange KYC Platform is available to both members and non-members who can purchase credits in order to undertake the required checks and scans. Baltic Exchange members receive a credit discount when using the KYC platform.