The Marine Claim File: What the Surveyor Asks For, in Order

The Master Circular of 5 September 2024 put the whole survey pipeline on a stated tempo. The insurer must allocate a surveyor within 24 hours of the claim being reported. The surveyor must submit the report within 15 days of allocation — with a pointed incentive: delay beyond fifteen days costs ₹500 per day, paid to the claimant. The insurer must then decide the claim within 7 days of receiving the report (or within 22 days of allocation, whichever is earlier), and delayed settlement carries interest at bank rate plus 2%, payable suo motu — without being asked.

The tempo cuts both ways, and the claimant's side of it is underappreciated. A pipeline that must move this fast rewards the insured whose file is complete on day one and penalises the one assembling documents in week three — because the surveyor's fifteen days start running against whatever exists when access is given. The operational translation: the claim intimation should go out immediately on discovery with the core identifiers (policy or certificate number, shipment particulars, loss description), and the document set below should be ready before the surveyor's first visit, not after their first request list.

An insurer's own published claim form is the honest checklist, and New India Assurance's marine claim form enumerates the enclosures: "Original Insurance Policy and/or Certificate duly Endorsed; complete invoices together with supplementary; copy of the Bill of Lading; copies of correspondence exchanged with the carriers [and] Port Trust together with their replies in original; steamer's survey report; carrier's certificate (rail, lorry, post and/or air)." Read as a sequence, the list is a chronology of the shipment itself: the cover that attached, the value that was at risk, the carriage that was contracted, and the conduct at destination.

Three items deserve annotation. The certificate "duly endorsed" points back to the attachment questions — declaration and premium timing under the open cover — dissected in the Open Cover vs COI note; a certificate with an attachment defect fails here, at enclosure one. The carrier correspondence "with replies in original" is the recovery-preservation trail: the written notice of loss within the statutory windows, and the claim lodged against the carrier, without which the insurer's subrogation under s. 79 of the Marine Insurance Act is an empty right — the arithmetic of those windows is in the time-bars note. And the carrier's certificate or port outturn is the third-party statement of condition at delivery — the document that converts a bare damage report into an attributable transit loss.

The discipline reduces to a standing per-shipment annex: certificate and declaration evidence; invoice and packing list as reconciled at shipment; transport documents; the notice-window and suit-clock calendar; and the consignee instruction sheet for delivery conduct. Add the post-loss chapter — intimation copy, photographs, correspondence log — and the surveyor's fifteen days run on a complete record. TradeWatch assembles exactly this as its Marine Cargo Insurance Broker Packet, each element carrying its verdict and citation, delivered before sailing. Kanan Labs prepares claim-admissible evidence. It does not advise on, select, or bind insurance, and does not conduct claims advocacy — your IRDAI-licensed broker advises and places, and the surveyor's statutory role remains independent.