Open cover, open policy, annual or specific: which marine cargo policy

Marine cargo insurance covers goods in transit — by sea, air, rail or road, domestic or international — against loss or damage under the Institute Cargo Clauses. For a business that ships regularly, the question is not whether to insure but which policy shape fits the flow.

The four shapes

Policy	For	How it works
Specific policy	A one-off shipment	One voyage, one sum insured, one certificate
Open cover	Ongoing imports and exports	An agreement with a limit per conveyance and per location; each shipment is declared and certificated; premium on declarations
Open policy	Domestic movements between known points	A floating sum insured drawn down by declarations
Annual / sales-turnover policy	Steady domestic flows	Priced on annual turnover; minimum premiums apply; no per-shipment declarations

The questions that decide it

• Turnover by lane and mode — where does the stock move, and how?
• Commodity groups and packing — the clause set (A, B or C) is chosen per commodity.
• Limit per conveyance and per location — the two numbers that bound an open cover.
• Whether war and strikes cover is wanted, and whether duty and increased value are insured alongside.

What Bridge does with it

Bridge models marine around the open cover — limits, clause sets, a declaration mechanism and a certificate stream — rather than forcing it into a location-based property form. Declarations and certificates then run through Connect, so the client’s shipping team self-serves. Cargo has been detariffed since 1994; Bridge carries the market conventions — annual-policy minimums, duty and increased-value links, valuation basis — as product configuration.