Hiscox, the Bermuda-based global specialist insurer, has introduced a new API-driven Cargo solution, designed to underwrite small cargo and stock throughput risks through its network of broker partners.
Hiscox developed its Cargo API to meet the rising demand for insurance products that cover smaller cargo risks—typically excluded from the London market—by catering to the global storage and shipping needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Risks covered span categories including apparel, timber, machinery and components, agricultural goods, and finished or manufactured products. By leveraging the Cargo API, brokers can obtain quotes and bind coverage almost instantly for qualifying risks—ensuring speed, reliability, and confidence for clients.
Hiscox developed the risk rating models, policy wordings, and software code for the Cargo API entirely in-house, with all risks backed 100% by Hiscox Syndicate 33. As the first broker partner to adopt the digital solution, Price Forbes has built the API’s front end, enabling both themselves and their partners to access the product seamlessly.
The Cargo API offers flexible cover for transit, stock-only, and stock throughput risks, with limits up to US$5 million—though the majority of exposures are expected to be under US$1 million. Backed by Hiscox’s expert claims team, the solution ensures fast, reliable claims settlement, giving clients confidence and stability when it matters most.
“We were asked to help respond to a need from companies for a cargo insurance product for smaller sized risks; needs that were not being met by a London insurance market more used to dealing with larger and more complex cargo risks. Our digital solution is available to brokers, to enable them as our coverholders to immediately start pricing and binding smaller cargo risks,” commented Aimee Nolan, line underwriter, Cargo, for Hiscox London Market, in a statement.
“We see our cargo digital product as not only an innovative way of meeting client demand with a product that can provide immediate coverage, but also as a means of bringing new premium into the London insurance market that would otherwise be retained locally,” Nolan added. “This solution complements and balances our portfolio of larger, more complex and catastrophe-exposed cargo risks, while providing an easily repeatable template to develop other digital solutions for other coverholders where Hiscox has the risk appetite.”
“We were regularly being asked to help find cargo insurance solutions for small to medium sized cargo risks so we turned to Hiscox, to see if they could develop a digital solution given their existing strong reputation in this area for other lines of business,” according to Huw Davies, executive director at broker Price Forbes.
“Hiscox’s Cargo API is the result and we are delighted to see it launch as it provides an attractive new insurance facility for many cargo owners who may previously have had to look elsewhere for cover or where there was no solution for them,” Davies said.
