The Comité Maritime International (CMI), a non-governmental organisation with the aim of promoting harmonisation of maritime law, has started a new work project. The recently installed new International Working Group (IWG) is chaired by the author of this article. Vice-Chair is Joseph Grasso, United States, who is the current liaison between CMI and IUMI. Secretary of the IWG – or, to use the CMI terminology: its Rapporteur – is Jaime Albors from Spain.
The IWG will collect statutory marine insurance laws and standard market conditions from all relevant insurance markets and filter out generally accepted principles in statutory law and insurance practice. Those principles then shall be put to the vote by the CMI Assembly and, once accepted, be known as the CMI Restatement of Marine Insurance Law and Practice.
The IWG comprises members from 27 countries which according to IUMI statistics, make up for about 85% of the global marine premium. As one of the first IWGs of CMI, this group will employ artificial intelligence tools to structure the documentation. Currently, various tools are being tested for their suitability
For a considerable time, CMI and IUMI have very successfully cooperated on various CMI projects, including General Average, the Beijing Convention on Judicial Sales, the revision of the 1910 Collision Convention and recently also cyber security issues. CMI and IUMI continue this cooperation with this new project. CMI appreciates that IUMI accepted CMI’s invitation to participate in the work and that Cristina Guerrero will be its representative.  The Chair of the IWG has already given an introduction to the project to IUMI‘s Legal & Liability Committee and addressed the wider IUMI audience during IUMI‘s 2026 Spring Meeting in Hamburg in March. Meanwhile, in May, the IWG had its first meeting during the 2026 CMI Colloquium in Rio de Janeiro in hybrid form with a record attendance of more than 90% of its members attending either in person or digitally.
