After Blueprint Two: what a cargo coverholder should stop waiting for

In March 2026 Lloyd's set out a new strategy and confirmed it was transitioning away from Blueprint Two, with Velonetic refocused on incremental technology modernisation and the protection of market operational resilience. The Lloyd's Market Association has since been encouraging participants to take a modular approach rather than wait for one programme to deliver everything.

Plenty has been written about what that means for the market centre. Less has been written about what it means on a Monday morning for a broker holding binding authority for cargo.

The answer is that nothing moved.

The obligations did not change

Bordereaux still go to capacity providers on a schedule, in the format each of them wants. Referral discipline still has to be evidenced, not just exercised. Sanctions and vessel screening still have to happen, and the only version of that which actually protects you is the one that happens before bind rather than as a check the following month. Exposure still has to be controlled per binder, per line, per territory.

None of that was ever going to be delivered by a market-wide programme. It sits with the coverholder, and it sat with the coverholder throughout. What the last few years did was give everyone a reasonable excuse to defer their own decisions until the shape of the market's plumbing was clear. That excuse has now expired, which is uncomfortable and also useful.

Where the risk actually lives

In most cargo underwriting operations we look at, three things are true at once.

The referral rules live in someone's head. There is a written version, and there is the version an experienced underwriter applies, and the two have drifted. That works until the person is on holiday or leaves.

Screening happens, but after the fact. Somebody runs the checks, finds nothing, and everyone moves on. It is only a control if it can block a bind, and in most setups it cannot.

Declarations arrive as attachments. The client emails a spreadsheet, or a PDF, and somebody keys it. Every keystroke is an opportunity for the bordereau to disagree with the policy record, and the bordereau is what the carrier sees.

Individually these are annoyances. Together they are the reason a delegated authority audit is stressful rather than routine.

What owning it looks like

Referral rules that live in the workflow, so the rule is applied by the system and the exception is recorded as an exception rather than as a decision nobody can reconstruct.

Screening as a gate. Binding is blocked until sanctions and KYC are clean. Not flagged, blocked.

A shipping portal the client declares into, so shipment data arrives structured instead of arriving as an attachment for someone to retype.

And, the part that matters most and gets discussed least: the same cover, book and ledger structure underneath the underwriting side as the broking side. If you both place and bind, and they sit in two systems, then reconciling them is a permanent job.

Two modules, one solution

This is why we sell tigerlab as one platform with two parts. The brokerage side handles placement, policy administration, settlement across four ledgers and compliance gating before bind. tigersuite with i2go adds the shipping portal, the referral rules and the screening for firms holding delegated authority for cargo.

Pure brokerage, you need the first. Delegated authority, you need both, and the useful thing is that they were built to sit together rather than to be integrated later.

Built with a global cargo brokerage, in co-creation with the brokers and underwriters using it. First markets live, rolling out across more than 30 countries.