Insights from Captain Saunak Rai’s talk, Chairman of ICS Singapore, at the 2nd edition of the Demurrage Innovation Forum.
For most of its history, shipbroking has been defined by a clear set of qualities: relationship depth, market instinct, the ability to connect the right parties at the right moment, and the kind of institutional knowledge that only comes with years in the trade.
Those qualities have not disappeared. But the environment around them is changing faster than most in the industry have fully reckoned with. At the second edition of the Demurrage Innovation Forum we discussed the changing role of the shipbroker, and how the profession is at an inflection point.
Data & Relationship Building
The top shipbroker of today resembles the top stockbroker of the 1990s: deeply connected, fast on their feet, commercially sharp, operating largely on the strength of their network and their judgement. But the top stockbroker of the 1990s no longer defines what excellence looks like in that profession. Today’s investment banker brings something different alongside those relational skills: analytical rigour, data modelling, scenario planning, intelligence-driven decision-making.
Shipbroking is heading in the same direction. The broker of 2030 will still need the relationships. But they will need to pair them with something the industry has historically underinvested in: the ability to work with data. The future shipbroker will not be replaced by technology, but someone who knows how to use technology better than anyone else in the maritime space.
The maritime industry is not short of data. Fixture history, operational performance records, demurrage behaviours, trading patterns, port risk profiles: this information exists, and in substantial volume. What has been missing is the infrastructure and the culture to treat it as a strategic asset.
Brokers have historically been among the slower adopters of analytical tools, despite the fact that the work they do is precisely the kind of high-volume, semi-structured information management that modern AI is well-suited to assist with. Matching counterparties, interpreting market signals, assessing risk across a portfolio of fixtures: these are tasks that technology is increasingly capable of augmenting.
The pressure for this shift is not coming from within the broking community alone. It is coming from clients. Charterers today demand more from their brokers than they did a decade ago. They want richer market intelligence, faster turnaround on analysis, precise risk assessment, and recommendations grounded in data rather than intuition alone.
The expectation embedded in a brokerage fee — historically 1 to 2.5 percent — has effectively doubled in terms of what it buys, and will double again. Technology has absorbed many of the functions brokers once guarded as their differentiators.
The premium, going forward, will sit with those who can offer something beyond execution: operational foresight, post-fixture optimisation, sustainability insight, demurrage intelligence.
The LNG Example
On the second edition of the Demurrage Innovation Forum, the Singapore ICS Chairman Capt. Saunak Rai touched on the LNG sector: a market where the stakes of operational complexity are particularly high.
Tight scheduling, stringent safety regimes, multimillion-dollar exposure to delays, and the technical intricacy of coordinating between vessel readiness, boil-off gas windows, and berth performance all create an environment where data-driven intelligence is not a competitive advantage but a commercial necessity.
For brokers operating in this space, or in any high-complexity, high-stakes freight market, the case for analytical capability is not aspirational but the baseline that client expectations are converging toward.
What Charterers Now Expect
First, treat operational data as a strategic asset, not an administrative by-product. The information that flows through broking transactions has commercial value that is currently left largely untapped.
Second, develop genuine digital literacy. Not the ability to build AI systems, but the ability to understand what good data looks like, how to interrogate AI-generated outputs, and how to apply that intelligence in client conversations.
Third, expand the service offering. The broker of the future will be providing a range of analytical and advisory services that the broker of today is only beginning to develop. That transition takes time, and the organisations that start building those capabilities now will be materially better positioned.
The relational and contextual judgement that defines great broking cannot be automated. But it is heading toward augmentation, and the brokers who understand that distinction will be the ones who define what the profession looks like in the decade ahead.
This post draws on insights shared at the 2nd Demurrage Innovation Forum in Singapore.
The forum brings together senior professionals in chartering, operations, and maritime technology for focused discussion on the future of demurrage and claims management.