Mind the gap: Ensure seamless coverage for clients’ goods in transit with FM Cargo

Picture a truck carrying IT equipment weaving through motorway traffic on its way to a data center. Somewhere in the back is your client’s next revenue stream, and your reputation as their broker. What happens if there’s a crash? Is the loss covered under the property program, the cargo policy—or not at all?

Many property insurance clients place their cargo with a separate market when it’s in transit. That separation can leave grey areas between wordings, slow down claims, and create painful conversations just when your client most needs simplicity and certainty.

FM Cargo eliminates these stresses, providing a cargo policy that dovetails with FM Property, so you can be confident there won’t be any nasty surprises if the worst happens. We also help clients to ensure risk mitigation excellence to their goods-in-transit. As you’ll see in this article, our solutions averted a potential equipment loss of more than USD $4 million in one real-world case.

From fragmented policies to full coverage

FM Cargo is available to existing clients who insure their commercial properties with FM. It unifies these policies under one provider, simplifying relationship management, providing clarity on how claims will be handled, and helping you nurture long-term client relationships.

We’ll ensure that your clients have full, seamless coverage when transporting goods or materials—from data center owners moving IT equipment to manufacturing companies moving parts, pharmaceutical firms transporting chemicals, and beyond. Where your clients may previously have experienced a stand-off between two competing carriers when goods are damaged in transit, losses will instead be resolved smoothly, with FM’s characteristic claims excellence.

For brokers, this offering also simplifies placements. Rather than sourcing a separate cargo market and reconciling multiple Insurer wordings, you can place both property and cargo “under one roof”, making renewals and program changes faster and more efficient.

Extend FM’s risk engineering expertise to cargo

With FM Cargo, we apply our engineering first philosophy to cargo. This is particularly powerful in complex, high value sectors where cargo failures can quickly become business critical. Our cargo risk engineers empower clients with proactive loss prevention, analyzing shipping patterns, packaging and routes to understand where things can go wrong and how to mitigate those risks.

In data centers, for example, the cargo isn’t generic boxes on pallets. It’s racks of servers, storage and networking equipment. Even minor mishandling can delay flagship site openings. FM brings the same rigor it applies to property protection to the way equipment is packed, loaded, secured and moved on the road.

This is how we helped a global technology company to roll out standardized, best practice methods for packaging, securing, and transporting its server racks. Shortly after these were implemented, they saved more than USD $4 million when one of the company’s trucks was involved in a serious road traffic accident.

Minimize cargo loss exposure with business interruption cover

When cargo is damaged in transit, the knock-on effects can cause significant business interruption and losses beyond the value of the cargo itself. In renewables and large power projects, for example, project cargo may include turbines, transformers, or other equipment that must arrive on time and in perfect condition for the project to connect to the grid. Damage in transit can mean missed grid connection slots and years of lost power sales.

That’s why FM Cargo also offers clients the option to extend coverage beyond physical loss or damage to include business interruption cover for cargo transportation. So, if a damaged shipment covered under the policy leads to downstream business interruption there is coverage for the financial consequences.

In this way, we empower brokers to act as strategic partners on risk mitigation, helping you nurture lasting client relationships by maximizing resilience and ensuring consistent claims excellence.

If you have a client who could benefit from FM Cargo, we would love to hear from you. Submit a new business enquiry here and we’ll be in touch ASAP.

This is part of a series of articles FM is producing to help brokers understand the value we can provide to their commercial property insurance clients. Look out for the next post in this series for more valuable insights.