Fragmented systems increase global maritime sanctions risk: report

Regulators increasingly expect risks to be detected before violations occur.

Maritime companies face rising sanctions and compliance complexity as 82% executives say compliance demands are growing, according to a new report by Marcura.

“Regulators increasingly expect risks to be detected before violations occur,” the report said.

Together, these factors increase exposure for global operators at a time when compliance processes remain fragmented across organisations.

Moreover, manual checks across multiple systems drive onboarding and Know Your Customer costs to $1,500–$3,500 per counterparty—a financial burden that surges in high-turnover markets.

“Despite increased investment in sanctions screening and automation, the problem is not a lack of effort,” the report added.

Siloed screening platforms produce conflicting data, forcing compliance teams to manually reconcile risk profiles. This redundancy traps intelligence within individual organisations, preventing the industry-wide sharing of verification data.

Payment fraud targeting maritime runs three to five times higher than traditional banking, and is also cited as another problem for the industry.

Over 65,000 corruption-related reports have been documented across more than 1,000 ports in 150 countries, according to the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network.

Rather than every organisation bearing the full cost of counterparty verification in isolation, a networked model would allow screening outcomes to travel with the counterparty across participating organisations.