Bite-Sized Entry #5: International E-Registry of Ships (IERS)

An overview of the digital blockchain-based ship registration and renewal process

Shipping is essential to the world’s economy with over 90% of the world’s trade carried by sea as the most cost-effective way to move goods and raw materials around the world.

Just like on land, the sea is governed by rules and laws that all sailors must follow to maintain order. The Ship Registration process is a critical part of the process, which shipping companies need to regularly engage with to operate in line with these rules.

The purpose of Ship Registration is to provide worldwide proof of ownership. This allows ship owners, to comply with all the complex Maritime laws and treaties that govern the vast global shipping industry.

However, current Ship Registration processes are very laborious and require lots of documents, such as the example below:

The Ship Registration process of the Maritime Administration of Latvia

Furthermore, ship registration processes around the world (and the organisations that govern them) vary widely, which causes significant inefficiencies and imposes substantial costs, since keeping track and conforming to all of the different processes is not easy.

This is why the collaboration between Perlin, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) now brings the IERS to create powerful new efficiencies and lower compliance costs.

What is the IERS?

The IERS is an entirely new digital blockchain-based solution to streamline, standardize and drastically improve the currently cumbersome ship registration and renewal process.

The IERS will be powered by Perlin’s Wavelet Protocol to create a blockchain E-register enable self-executing smart contracts, a streamlined relationship management platform, and vastly simplified data entry user systems. Automated document checking and API integration from trusted data sources will also render inefficient manual systems currently used effectively obsolete.

All in all, the IERS will improve many aspects of Ship Registration, such as reducing time, documents and operational costs, all the while increasing security to revolutionize the maritime scene.

Worldwide Adoption

Singapore will be the first mover, testbed and leader in the new IERS digital standard for ship registration, with the ICC providing active and ongoing support for global adoption once successfully implemented.

For further reading about the IERS, click here.

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