1. Charterers generally refer to brokers engaged in voyage chartering, time chartering and bareboat chartering in the tramp market. With their professional knowledge and skills in shipping, they are entrusted by the charterer or the shipowner to provide the source of goods or ship information, and within the scope of their authorization, they negotiate with the other party or broker on the terms involved in the charter party, but they have no right to enter into a lease independently. After the conclusion of the lease contract, the chartering broker shall lease the goods in accordance with the terms of the contract agreed by the lessor and the lessee, track the dynamics of the goods, and inform the client of the dynamic information in time. The service responsibility that the broker should perform shall continue until the end of the lease, and the commission shall be collected in the manner and proportion agreed with the client in advance.
2. Ship (buying and selling) broker: With his own professional knowledge and skills in shipping, he accepts the entrustment of the buyers and sellers of ships, provides the technical specifications and market information of the ships, and as the principal or agent of one of the buyers and sellers of ships, negotiates the ship price with the other party or the other party's broker, concludes the ship buying and selling contract, arranges the delivery of the ships, and recommends maritime lawyers and various technical service providers involved in the ship buying and selling. Similarly, brokers have no right to enter into sales contracts independently. After the transaction is completed, the ship trading broker may collect the commission according to the proportion agreed in advance.
3. Freight Forwarder: This is the earliest broker approved for practice in China, but the word "broker" is not used in the industry, but in essence, freight forwarders are brokers in the regular ship (liner) market. The business licenses of all international freight forwarders are written in this way: international shipping, land transportation, booking space, warehousing, freight settlement and so on. It is an intermediary behavior for them to book shipping space on behalf of the shipper. Unlike typical chartering brokers, usually their goods are not enough to book the whole ship, so they can only book some shipping spaces.
4. Ship insurance broker: As the name implies, this is a broker specializing in providing intermediary services for marine cargo and ship insurance. The auditing organ of these brokers is the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the licenses are also classified as insurance, which is audited and supervised by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission. Once licensed, marine cargo and ship insurance is only a part of its business scope. This part of the brokerage business has already been carried out.
5. Ship financing brokers: Similar to insurance brokers, brokers specializing in ship financing business should be audited and supervised by financial authorities. For example, investment banking and private equity fund business all belong to this category. They often do not appear as brokers, but they are also brokers in essence.
Obviously, shipping agents are different from real estate agents. First of all, because the technical and legal requirements of shipping transactions are far more complicated than those of other industries, it is difficult to successfully complete the transactions only by the supply and demand sides. Usually, professional brokers must provide services from them, just as ordinary people must find a lawyer when they go to court. Secondly, it can be seen from the above breakdown that they provide "B2B" brokerage services, and the clients are mostly professional enterprises (shipowners, charterers, importers and exporters) in this industry, while those who are not real estate brokers are mostly consumers who buy houses for the first time. There is no problem of protecting consumers' rights and interests in shipping brokerage business, so apart from insurance and financing brokerage business, most developed shipping countries are interested in freight forwarding, chartering and shipping (buying and selling). From this subdivision, we can see the difference between shipping brokerage business and general brokerage business. Then, why does the shipping brokerage business have such a subdivision form? This is caused by the subdivision structure of the shipping market itself.
1. In the regular ship (liner) market, the owner is mainly a container ship, which is composed of a relatively small number of suppliers (liner companies or liner associations) with greater pricing power and thousands of shippers who lack bargaining power (just like no one bargains with the bus). In order to prevent liner conferences or liner companies from monopolizing the shipping market, governments of all countries have intervened in the international liner market to a certain extent, and the United Nations also has international conventions to restrict the pricing behavior of international liner conferences. Therefore, in the liner market, the freight rate is announced in advance, and it is usually impossible (and unnecessary) for charterers to charter the whole container ship. Instead, choose a liner company, use the standard bill of lading of the liner company, and rent a small part of the shipping space according to the freight schedule published by each liner company. Freight forwarders often integrate the cargo volume of each consignor, form a joint force, ask the liner company for a relatively favorable freight rate, and then handle all the formalities involved in the import and export of goods on behalf of the consignor with their own industry experience and knowledge. Shipping companies are also happy to have professional agents to package and handle sporadic express mail, which can also reduce the company's operating costs, so they hit it off.
2. The irregular (chartering) market, which is dominated by dry bulk carriers, general cargo ships and oil (gas) carriers, is a market with almost complete free competition. Its characteristics are: the supplier (shipowner) and the demander (charterer) are highly dispersed, and each individual supplier or demander has no pricing power. Both sides are the recipients of market prices, which are evenly matched, so the government usually does not set freight rates. This market structure has led to the rapid change of freight rates, so the London Baltic Exchange publishes a comprehensive index reflecting the global dry bulk freight rate every day, called the Baltic Freight Index (BDI). First-class chartering brokers have mastered the unique information of cargo ships and are equipped with strong market research power, which can provide short, medium and long-term market analysis reports to shipowners or charterers. The business departments of shipowners or charterers can never reach such a level, so they often rely on one or several chartering brokers to obtain market information and analysis. Clarkson Company, which we are familiar with, is famous for its strong research strength in the industry, and its chief economist Martin Stopford is a famous shipping economist. In addition, chartering brokers are experts in chartering. They are not only proficient in various forms of chartering contracts, but also understand the port facilities, loading and unloading rates, insurance clauses, hydrology, geography, regulations, practices, religion, politics and other factors that may affect chartering. It is by virtue of their information, matching skills, professional knowledge and skills that they provide value-added services to shipowners or charterers in the informal (chartering) market.
3. The ship trading market is subdivided into new ship order market and second-hand ship trading market. The decision of buying and selling ships is decided by the top management of the shipping company, which belongs to the strategic decision of the shipping company, involves the long-term development strategy of the shipping company, and is closely related to the world economic and financial situation, banking policies and relations, shipping policies of various governments, financial status of the company and other factors. An excellent ship trading broker is not only a market expert, but also has enough ship technical knowledge and experience. Only by combining market information with the evaluation of ship technical condition can the ship price be evaluated more accurately.
4. Whether the ship transaction can be successfully concluded depends largely on whether the financing plan can be successfully realized. Therefore, brokers, investment banks and even ship fund management companies specializing in ship financing have emerged from the ship trading brokers. At this point, it has actually entered the capital market, so we separate it from the ship trading market and classify it into another category. Some people abroad still classify it as a ship trading market.
5. The ship insurance market is another branch, which can be subdivided into two categories: property insurance and liability insurance. The largest and most concentrated marine insurance market is in London, which is the global marine insurance information center. Lloyd's of London is called the world insurance company. With a history of 365,438+09 years, it is the oldest and most influential insurance organization in the international insurance industry. It is not an insurance company, but the world's largest insurance trading market consisting of 124 insurance consortia. In 2006, the premium underwritten by Lloyd's was about 654.38+065 billion pounds (US$ 33.3 billion), accounting for more than 50% of the total premium of the whole London insurance market and 5% of the world reinsurance market. Lloyd's members are not only insurance companies, but also a considerable number of insurance brokers. It is with these insurance brokers linked to Lloyd's interests that Lloyd's insurance market can obtain high-quality insurance contracts.
To start this industry, you must first have enough professional knowledge and be familiar with maritime law, charter party and so on. There is also a good English level.
I hope you can become a great shipping broker.