Please tell us the history of Marcura from its founding until today.
Marcura started in 2001 when our founders Christian Haunso and Jens Poulsen launched DA-Desk. Christian had worked in shipping, and he was frustrated by the level of administrative work involved, which required repetitive tasks that consumed time from high-value decision-making.
When he moved to banking, he saw how banks used specialised 'desks' to handle routine tasks, freeing up traders to focus on what really mattered.
That experience and the lessons from it was part of the inspiration behind Marcura’s "Service as Software" approach.
Traditional software examines a set of twenty tasks and tries to make each one go faster. Our approach focused on eliminating the sixteen non-core tasks, leaving knowledge workers to focus on the four that really require human judgment and decision-making.
Jens and Christian studied and mapped all the processes in the shipping industry. They identified the DA process as one of many processes ripe for “desking.”
That early work mapping processes across the shipping industry has helped to shape how we have evolved our offering as a company, both through in-house product development and through strategic acquisitions.
And that same ethos of ‘Service as Software’ still informs how we work with customers today. We have made significant investments in AI and other emerging technologies relevant to the services we deliver, but we maintain a ‘human in the loop’ approach to ensure quality.
What services do you offer to Shipping Companies?
Marcura provides a comprehensive ecosystem of products and services spanning every aspect of maritime operations, from port call planning and management to claims processing, procurement, and crew payments.
We serve around 950 shipping companies, supporting voyages that transport roughly a third of global commodities trade.
We are best known in commercial shipping, but we also have a strong footprint in other maritime sectors such as offshore and cruise.
Our recent acquisition of Brightwell Navigator, the leading crew payroll company in the cruise sector, means we now serve around 150,000 active crew accounts across commercial and maritime while our Group payment processing is north of $14 billion.
Are these services certified according to international quality assurance standards?
Yes, DA-Desk services are SOC-compliant and audited annually by external auditors. Additionally, we maintain insurance coverage for the unlikely scenario in which we perform our duties with gross negligence and fall victim to a fraudulent attempt. This ensures that our customers are protected against the growing threat of fraud, which, increasingly supported by advanced technology, requires robust and stringent countermeasures.
What are the reasons why shipping companies would choose you over your competitors?
Many of our customers have been with us for 20+ years. They trust us because they know they can rely on us to get the job done. Our "Service as Software" model means you get outcomes, not just tools. We combine technology with maritime experts who handle exceptions and complex situations.
We are 100% maritime-focused and operate at a scale unmatched in the industry. In a data-driven sector like shipping, scale, and how you leverage it, makes all the difference.
By handling core operational tasks for over 950 shipping companies, we are able to invest in capabilities no single company could build on its own. It is similar to buying electricity from a power grid rather than running your own generator. More efficient, more powerful, and always on.
We have used that scale to good effect in areas such as AI, compliance and data-driven intelligence. We pass the value from our investment in these areas onto our customers in the form of maritime-specific agentic AI that solves complex challenges in seconds; real-time sanctions screening and compliance checks updated constantly and monitored by a team of 75 specialists around the clock; predictive insights and benchmarking data that drive voyage profitability.
Shipping is an industry that never stands still. Neither have we. We have shown a willingness to invest consistently in products and services that address real issues in maritime. We give our customers freedom to focus, control over risk, and confidence to move at the speed of trade.
What are Marcura's products?
We look at our products in terms of the problems they solve, or ‘jobs to be done’ as we call it internally.
For planning and managing port calls we have DA-Desk for disbursement accounting and PortLog for cost-benchmarking and delay prevention.
For claims processing, we have Marcura Claims, which covers laytime predictions and demurrage disputes.
ShipServ covers procurement and supplier management, along with Portsdirect, which offers access to specialist port services at discounted rates such as towage. VesselMan caters to dry-docking and technical projects.
MarTrust is Marcura’s crew and vendor payments division, which now includes Brightwell Navigator for crew payments in the cruise industry.
We also have several cross-platform capabilities, including Marcura AI, compliance, vendor payments, and a newly launched trade capital programme that changes traditional norms related to payment processing and enables shipping companies to strategically deploy their funds.
Each solution or service we offer delivers value independently, but our modular structure allows you to combine them for even greater benefit.
Interview to Dionisis Politis
