Rising Sanctions, Compliance Complexity Increase Global Shipping Risks

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 organizations.

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. Organizations 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 organizations, while intelligence gathered by one remains inaccessible to others facing identical decisions. 

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.

The report sets out a direction of travel toward compliance functioning as shared infrastructure, where verification is performed once, recognized across workflows, and reinforced by collective intelligence. Rather than every organization bearing the full cost of counterparty verification in isolation, a networked model would allow screening outcomes to travel with the counterparty across participating organizations

The full report is available here.