Maritime contracts are entering a new phase.
Join BIMCO and Hunit’s Agentic Contracts Advisory Board.
For decades, the industry has relied on carefully drafted standard contracts, agreed in principle and then managed separately through manual processes and downstream systems. While the words on the page remain critical, the way contractual obligations are executed, monitored and acted upon is changing rapidly.
BIMCO is now exploring how agentic technology can support the next evolution of standard contracts and we are inviting industry practitioners to help guide that journey.
To support this work, BIMCO is establishing an Agentic Contracts Advisory Board, bringing together operational, legal and commercial expertise from across the maritime sector to shape how standard contracts can move from static documents to live, operational systems.
What are agentic contracts?
Agentic contracts go beyond digitised PDFs or automated document creation. They explore how contractual rights and obligations can be interpreted and acted upon by intelligent systems helping organisations manage performance, compliance and execution more effectively across day‑to‑day operations.
This is not about replacing legal judgement or commercial decision‑making. Rather, the aim is to examine how contracts can be embedded more directly into operational workflows, reducing friction, improving transparency and supporting better outcomes across the contract lifecycle.
Why an advisory board?
BIMCO’s standard contracts serve a wide, diverse and global industry. Any meaningful application of agentic technology must reflect real operational practice not theoretical design alone.
That is why the Agentic Contracts Advisory Board is being formed as a practitioner‑led forum, allowing participants to:
- Share real‑world perspectives on how contracts are currently used, managed and interpreted
- Identify where agentic technologies could add value and where caution is needed
- Help ensure future applications align with BIMCO’s principles of neutrality, trust and broad industry usability
- Contribute to shaping approaches that work across different company types, sizes and jurisdictions.
Insights from the advisory board will help inform BIMCO’s wider contracts strategy and related digital initiatives, including work connected to platform‑enabled contract workflows.
Who should consider joining?
BIMCO welcomes interest from professionals with hands‑on experience in contractual execution and governance within shipping, including:
- Shipowners and ship managers
- Charterers and operators
- Legal and contract management professionals.
A balance of perspectives will be essential, and advisory board membership will reflect BIMCO’s long‑standing commitment to cross‑sector and cross‑function representation.
How the advisory board will work
The advisory board will be convened around a series of structured discussions, combining strategic framing with practical use‑cases. BIMCO will act as secretariat, facilitating dialogue and ensuring insights are captured and fed into ongoing product and standards work.
Participation is collaborative rather than promotional, with a shared objective of advancing approaches that benefit the wider maritime community.
Express your interest
If you would like to contribute to this work and help shape how standard maritime contracts evolve in an agentic, system‑enabled environment, we encourage you to register your interest by contacting BIMCO’s Chief Digital Officer, Grant Hunter, at gh@bimco.org.
Your experience can help ensure that emerging approaches remain grounded in operational reality — and aligned with the principles that have underpinned BIMCO contracts for over a century.
