Assurance report · 2026-09-24
How we tried
to break it.
Before a desk asks anyone to trust it with a cargo or an asset, it should be able to say how it was tested. Two rounds were run. First, 100 questions a seller, a buyer, a bank, an inspector, an owner or an insurer would ask. Then 80 adversarial probes set from four hostile positions: a client's risk officer, a regulator, an independent assessor and a standards body. Every finding was fixed and turned into a test that runs on every build.
Second round
Adversarial probes
Each probe sets out an attack and the behaviour a competent reviewer would require, and either the desk behaved that way or it did not.
First round
Questions a counterparty asks
What a seller, a buyer, a bank, an inspector, an owner or an insurer would want settled before working with a desk they do not yet know.
Simulation
50 transactions, end to end
Three buyers with different styles, and faults introduced on purpose: looking at rival bids, late bids, bids beyond a mandate, mismatched credits, sanctioned vessels, wet cargo, unsupported weather claims, self-approval, a lone change of bank details, divergent assays and insider snooping. The rules were checked again every ten transactions. Counterparties and cargoes are invented; the keys, signatures and checks are real.
Across those cargoes the schedule charged US$888,162 of arranger fee on US$739,152,793 of cargo — 12.0 basis points, with the per-cargo minimum reached on the smaller parcels. The same function that produced those figures produces the published schedule, so the two cannot drift apart.
Standards
What is checked against what
| Standard | What is enforced |
|---|---|
| UCP 600 and eUCP 2.1 | Five banking days to examine documents; refusal, waiver and preclusion; the carrier and the capacity in which a bill of lading is signed; quantity and amount tolerances; notice that an electronic presentation is complete |
| IMSBC Code | Moisture below the transportable moisture limit before loading, on a sample no older than seven days and a limit test no older than six months |
| MLETR and the Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023 | One transferable record, exclusive control by a single holder, and an endorsement chain that can be verified offline |
| GLEIF vLEI and ISO 17442 | Role credentials chained to the GLEIF root, valid for no more than a year, with legal entity identifiers checked digit by digit |
| W3C Verifiable Credentials 2.0 | A company verification exports in the 2.0 envelope. The shape is compatible; the proof suite is not certified |
| RFC 8785 canonical JSON | Canonical form refuses values that cannot be signed unambiguously |
| RFC 3161 timestamping | The witness format is stated honestly as RFC 3161-style rather than a qualified token. Live work needs a qualified authority |
| Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 | Continuous screening, the fifty per cent ownership test, aggregated beneficial ownership, a sealed compliance chain for reports, the consent moratorium, and no tipping off |
| UK and EU data protection | Encrypted documents, staff access visible to the subject, erasure alongside lawful retention, transfer mechanisms and a retention purge |
| IOSCO benchmark principles | Signed index values, licensing per provider, and a completed pricing period before a final price is issued |
| Vessel and port identifiers | Ship and port codes validated for format and check digit wherever they appear |
Limits
What is simulated, and what live work needs
This is a proof of concept run for a small number of principals. The engine, the keys and the checks are real. The world around them is not yet, and the table below says exactly where the line falls.
| Area | In this preview | Before live transactions |
|---|---|---|
| Counterparties, registries, lists and feeds | Invented fixtures standing in for company registries, the global entity identifier system, sanctions lists, vessel screening, position data and price indices. | Licensed feeds under contract, with the freshness of each feed monitored. |
| Keys | Real signing and encryption keys, generated in the browser and held in page memory for the duration of a session. | Passkeys or a device enclave for people, and a hardware security module for organisation and gate keys. |
| Witness and timestamp | An in-process witness key, labelled as development only. | An independent qualified timestamping authority and a public transparency log. |
| Title registry | A simulated single-holder registry for electronic bills of lading. | An approved electronic title registry, reached through its own interface. |
| Regulatory perimeter | UIE acts as arranger only. It never holds money, takes title or holds document keys. | A legal opinion on the perimeter, engagement with the regulator where arranging requires it, and an appointed money laundering reporting officer. |
| Storage | The schema is deployed to an isolated database in Frankfurt. The engine in this preview runs in your browser. | The gate running server side, row-level access control on every table, and an independent security audit. |
Perimeter. UIE acts as arranger only. It never holds client money, never takes title, never holds document keys. Operator: UIE Ltd (England & Wales, 17334450). Records are held in the European Union, in Frankfurt. Fee basis: basis points of transaction value, tapered by size, with a minimum and a cap set per asset class, payable on delivery of the evidence pack, whether or not the parties go on to close, by the mandating party, disclosed in writing to both sides. Third-party costs — inspection, survey, assay, escrow agent, registry and lien searches, permits and insured transport, charged at cost and disclosed. Where UIE also fixes the vessel, the 1.25 per cent chartering commission is taken instead of the cargo fee, never in addition to it.