The new paradigm-shifting solution for laytime claims processing
✓ Digitalise and standardise your laytime claims process
✓ Improve accuracy and speed, reduce errors
✓ Faster cash conversion of your claims
Are you experiencing any of these laytime pains?
Financial issues
- Millions of $ locked up on balance sheets
- Unpredictable cash payments
Industry issues
- Multiple claims versions from counterparties
- Many one-off stakeholders
- Laytime talent shortage
Operational issues
- Highly manual, complex, tedious process
- Ambiguities leading to costly disputes
- Data entry errors
Why laytime needs a better solution: Why nobody is happy
Christian (Marcura’s chairman) and Jens (CEO) are the creators of ClaimsHub and have been investigating this problem for years.
Here’s Jens:
Everybody is frustrated with the claims process. Nobody is happy.
Claims which should, by rights, be settled very quickly, take on average 5 months to settle.
Why?
We have analysed this and realised that even if one party and the other party have great systems and great people, they do not have the same process so there’s no coordination of the process between counterparties.
There are a lot of claims solutions out there in the market today because every team needs to have at least a spreadsheet or a calculator or some other platform that helps them with their claims.
What is actually missing is the platform that coordinates claims between parties in a transparent reliable way.
That’s ClaimsHub.ai.
The ClaimsHub platform does all of this
What is ClaimHub? 
Here’s Jens again:
ClaimsHub.ai is a very sophisticated workflow platform that is managed by a dedicated team of claims experts here at Marcura.
Whilst the calculation and documentation are important, the workflow before and after the claim is submitted and contested and agreed is also important as that entire end-to-end workflow needs to be managed.
Since nobody in the industry can control each other’s workflow, there’s a logical need for a third party who can act like an enabler of a streamlined workflow and that requires a platform and people.
So we dedicate a number of claims experts, process experts and data experts to keep the claims flow going so that it doesn’t stop at any time on anybody’s desk.
That will speed up the reporting, analysis, approval and ultimately, the settlement of claims to benefit everybody in the supply chain.
The benefits of having a standardised and enabled process and a platform with lots of data on the process and on the claims will yield a range of benefits for the CFOs and for the users.
Users:
Will have a very efficient platform, very much like having a modern digital back-office.
CFOs and CEOs:
It also benefits the company at large because there’s a counterparty involvement so claims are a service that a shipowner actually delivers to their freight customers.
When you can speed up the process – and our team will make sure that the process is speedy and accurate – that brings you closer to speedier settlement.
A speedier process will lead to faster cash conversion of your claims.
Chartering team:
We can provide analytics of which part of the claim is related to which part of the charter party which then has ambiguity which is either on the charter party itself or on the statement of facts.
So that produces a valuable learning loop.
Data and analysis for all, financial dashboard:
There’s an audit trail, you can see exactly what’s going on with all your counterparties and there’s a financial dashboard so you can see how your claims are evolving and how your outstandings are going down and they’re being paid faster or you can feed that data into your finance platform.
Why the .AI in ClaimsHub.ai?
Running a laytime platform is tricky.
We use a combination of human talent, automation and AI power to analyse your claims quickly and accurately.
To bring all the data, analysis and documents together at the right place and at the right time takes AI and machine learning to get right.
ClaimsHub key benefits
We’ll take away your headaches but leave you in control.
This screen shows the Compare View. This shows a comparison between laytime events in Version 1 and Version 2 of the claim. The highlighted row for 'inward passage' on the left-hand side of the comparison surfaces a map view in the validation tab on the right-hand side. This map shows where the ship was when the events were recorded as having taken place.
This view shows a comparison between Version 2 of the claim and a counter claim. The highlighted row for 'Not to count' on the right-hand side of the comparison highlights in the document the specific details of the counter claim.
This is a laytime table that gives the details of all laytime activities. You can add remarks and attachments in the right-hand panel. You can see that a remark has been added to Version 4 of this claim and that the remark includes an upload of the Agent SOF (Statement of Facts). You can also switch to a historical version (in the drop-down of the navigation bar).
This is a digitised version of the SOF. This view provides the user with the ability to add time allocations and %'s to SOF items to adjust the claim.
Here is a confirmation of all the ports in the claims and any remarks added to each one. In this example, the user requests that the Master SOF is used and that SOF is attached to the remark.
4 ways ClaimsHub is different and unique
ClaimsHub is not another laytime calculator.
Version control & compare + variance highlighting
We all know agreement of demurrage claims can take a while.
When your claim is returned by your counterparty, you want to be able to easily find your latest version….AND see what’s changed.
ClaimsHub includes a killer feature: the ability to compare any 2 versions during the entire life of the claim, and highlight (in a standard format) what’s changed.
We digitalise everything
Your CPs, your SoFs, other relevant documents, counterparty claims.
So what?
Well, it means fewer errors, and claims which are easy:
- to find
- to read
- for you to review.
Validation checks
We have a series of validation engines which check your claims.
These validations are powered by automation, AI and human specialists.
So what?
This produces quicker, more accurate claims for you to sign off.
It’s a service; not just a platform
We do all the work and deliver to you the claims for your review.
We do the digitisation, checking the data is complete and validated, and the analysis.
We check and ensure each document has all the key data points completed.
If you want us to collect all your relevant laytime original documents from your counterparties, we’ll do it as part of the service.
And, of course, Marcura is well known for its excellent customer service.
Graphical representations allow the user to quickly get an overview of the status of their claims. Toggles allow the user to switch between views of outstanding demurrage and despatch totals.
Graphical representations allow the user to quickly get an overview of the status of their claims. Toggles allow the user to switch between views of outstanding demurrage and despatch totals.
Elastic search provides the quickest way for a user to surface key data based on search criteria. Queries can be concatenated to allow more granular results to be returned to the table view. Results can be drilled down to provide further insights into the nature and composition of the claim.
In the overview tab, the graph filter allows the user to quickly toggle between statuses and customers. The filters affect the results displayed in the table.
A bank of advanced filters allows users to drill down into any field of the data displayed in the table. These banks of filters can be useful for locating records where the user does not have a specific entry in mind, or where the user would like to compare a larger amount of data.
The favourite functionality allows a user to save a search query with a chosen name and to recall that query quickly when required. Saved queries can be both recalled as well as removed.
To allow users to track progress on a claim we have expanded the remarks functionality to allow both customers and internal teams to add remarks to a claim. These can be expanded and added to by selecting the remarks entry on an individual claim. Remarks are recorded at a claim level only.
A way of segmenting data based on trade desk and claim age.
This process status report allows users to track outstanding claims by trade desk and also over time. This gives our users visibility on which segmentation requires attention to increase cash flow.
Data segmented by commodity with the ability to track by status and net outstanding.
Customer views
Here’s what our customers have to say about ClaimsHub.
Comments are from a survey which guaranteed anonymity.
ClaimsHub FAQs
How do you ensure the confidentiality of my data?
Ensuring confidentiality is critical to us at Marcura / ClaimsHub.
We have over 20 years of experience handling and processing confidential documents and data from all our 650+ customers.
We have very strictly controlled tools, processes and technologies in place to ensure this happens.
ClaimsHub’s owner, the Marcura group is a privately owned, independent company.
What is your “consultative approach”?
We are not a “plug and play” solution; we take a highly consultative approach with our customers to ensure that:
- processes are optimised
- risk is managed
- expectations are aligned
Why do we do this? We do this to ensure that we engage with your team to achieve the best possible outcome for your company.
Why are ClaimsHub & Marcura perfectly placed to solve the demurrage issue?
The ClaimsHub platform has its own team but is owned by, and so draws on the experience of, the Marcura group.
To trust someone else to work on your laytime claims, you’ll need them to have ide expertise in dealing with laytime, whciuh we have in our pre-cursor solution to ClaimsHub, called Laytime-Desk.
As it’s a platform bringing standardisation and digitalisation to laytime, you also want to know your provider has experience here.
The current lack of standardisation in laytime is similar to the situation 20 years ago with DAs.
Operators and agents also worked according to different standards and there were a lot of issues in poorly matching processes.
We have solved that to a large degree with DA-Desk and based on our experience, we have studied very carefully how we can help the industry enable a much more streamlined claims process where everybody wins.
Finally, Marcura:
- has strict data security and confidentiality controls and safeguards, including ISO certifications
- is an independent company you can trust with your data.
Marcura has over 20 years of experience of working with maritime data, digitalisation and automation, for our customers worldwide.
Marcura facts and figures
650+
Customers
60-strong
Compliance team
$12bn
Payments made per year
800+
Global team members
2001
Established