TRACinSURED Pitches Sensor-Triggered Delay Payouts to Air Cargo Shippers at TIACA Forum in Miami
Air cargo shippers often pay for trackers that record exactly what went wrong on a shipment. What they rarely get from that data is money. A program shown at the TIACA Air Cargo Forum in Miami Beach this week is built to close that gap.
TRACinSURED was presented at the forum, which ran October 26 to 29 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, by three companies. Solent Freight Services is a neutral wholesale forwarder based at JFK. Tag-N-Trac sells smart labels and trackers. Otonomi, a New York insurtech, runs the licensed managing general agent that designs and administers the cover. The risk itself sits with unnamed A-rated underwriters on a surplus lines basis, and the product is sold to commercial entities only. Solent and Tag-N-Trac aren’t insurers and don’t sell the policy.
How the trigger works
The core product is parametric delay cover. A Tag-N-Trac label rides with the shipment and logs location and condition events while Solent moves it through its air cargo and express network. Each policy carries a defined delay trigger and a fixed payout agreed before the freight moves. If the sensor record shows the trigger was hit, the pre-agreed amount is paid, and the companies say settlement is designed to take days.
That’s the whole appeal of parametric cover. Nobody haggles over what the loss was worth. The payout is set in advance, and the data decides whether it’s owed. The catch is spelled out in the release’s own fine print: a fixed payout may not match the actual loss.
Temperature and humidity excursions are handled the old way. That cover is optional, indemnity-based and needs proof of loss. Which makes sense. A late shipment is a yes or no fact; a spoiled one needs someone to say how spoiled.
Why shippers would pay for it
The companies’ case is about claims friction. Traditional cargo claims are settled after the fact, often in 45 days or more, they say, and some shippers never file at all. Venu Gutlapalli, Tag-N-Trac’s founder and chief digital officer, put it bluntly: “A temperature alert is not a claims file.” His firm keeps chain of custody over the data because an underwriter has to be able to rely on it.
Otonomi CEO Yann Barbarroux said the sensor feed plus Solent’s operating data let the insurer price risk by lane, with payouts set against shipment value. Lane pricing is the interesting part. A delay on a dense transatlantic route and one on a thin connection through a secondary airport are different risks, and a flat premium hides that.
When the program launched in early October it was aimed at pharmaceutical and cold chain freight, high-value perishables, electronics and business-to-business parcels, in early access for international commercial shippers. Solent says it serves more than 7,600 forwarders across more than 137 airports, so the distribution is already in place. Otonomi isn’t new to this either. It was founded in New York in 2021, and Barbarroux has described its delay product as keyed to one parameter, transit time, whatever caused the hold-up (weather, congestion or tariffs).
What the forum was worried about
The timing fits the room. TIACA’s program in Miami put geopolitical and maritime risk on the agenda, from the Strait of Hormuz to draft limits at the Panama Canal and Bab el-Mandeb, along with sessions on what shippers now expect in visibility and resilience. A product that turns a tracker log into a payout speaks to both.
What the release leaves out are the numbers a buyer would ask for first: the delay thresholds, the payout amounts, the premiums. Those will decide whether this stays a booth demo or becomes a line forwarders quote next to the freight rate.