Maritime companies face rising sanctions and compliance complexity as regulators increasingly expect risks to be detected before violations occur, according to a new report published by Marcura.
The report “The Fragmentation Problem in Maritime Compliance” points to divergence between US, EU and other sanctions regimes.
Secondary sanctions have expanded, and a growing shadow fleet continues to obscure ownership, insurance and trading histories. Together, these factors increase exposure for global operators at a time when compliance processes remain fragmented across organisations.
“The compliance function carries a question that never fully goes away: did we miss something? Fragmentation makes that question harder to answer. When the same counterparty produces different results across different systems, the noise drowns out the signals that actually matter.”
Compliance demands outpacing organisational capacity
Survey findings from Marcura show that 82% of maritime executives say compliance demands are growing. 86% express concern about undetected compliance risk.
Onboarding and KYC now cost $1,500–$3,500 per counterparty, driven largely by duplicated manual checks across multiple systems; a burden that compounds quickly in markets where counterparties change frequently.
Despite increased investment in sanctions screening and automation, the problem is not lack of effort. It is structural. Organisations routinely run multiple screening platforms that return different results on the same counterparty.
The compliance function becomes the manual integration layer, piecing together a risk picture from conflicting outputs. The same verification work is repeated across organisations, while intelligence gathered by one remains inaccessible to others facing identical decisions.
Risk extends well beyond sanctions
The problem extends beyond sanctions. Payment fraud targeting maritime runs three to five times higher than traditional banking when adjusted for transaction volume. ESG and supply chain obligations are expanding the scope of supplier vetting.
Anti-bribery controls remain inconsistent across a sector where, according to the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network, over 65,000 corruption-related reports have been documented across more than 1,000 ports in 150 countries. Each risk vector demands its own processes, with little infrastructure connecting them.
Fragmentation drowns out the signals that actually matter
Commenting on the challenges identified in the report, Andrei Grigoras, SVP, Compliance Solutions at Marcura, said: “The compliance function carries a question that never fully goes away: did we miss something? Fragmentation makes that question harder to answer. When the same counterparty produces different results across different systems, the noise drowns out the signals that actually matter.”
Toward compliance as shared infrastructure
The report sets out a direction of travel toward compliance functioning as shared infrastructure, where verification is performed once, recognised across workflows, and reinforced by collective intelligence.
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
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