A marine cargo insurance claim depends on evidence collected close to the point damage or loss is discovered — photographs of the damaged goods and packaging before anything is moved or discarded, a notation on the delivery receipt or proof-of-delivery document recording the damage at the point of handover, and, for significant claims, a surveyor's report commissioned promptly rather than after the goods have been unpacked and dispersed.
Notification timing matters: most policies require damage to be reported to the insurer within a specified window, sometimes as short as a few days from discovery, and delayed notification is itself a common reason claims are contested or reduced, separate from any question about the damage's cause.
The claim package typically needs the commercial invoice (to establish value), the bill of lading or airway bill, the packing list, photographic evidence, and the survey report or damage notation — assembling these as a single coherent file, rather than leaving the insurer to request each piece individually, materially speeds up settlement.
We help clients assemble this evidence when damage is discovered on a shipment we have handled, since having the full documentation chain already in our system for that shipment makes the claim file faster to put together than reconstructing it after the fact.