January 22, 2026
False Flags and Fraudulent Registries: The Hidden Threat to Global Shipping
Make faster commercial decisions. Get intelligence-led visibility into vessel behavior, trade exposure, and operational risk to reduce friction, protect margins, and stay in control.
Turn complex maritime activity into actionable intelligence. Move faster, manage risk, and scale operations without adding manual overhead.
Clear more business opportunities with 75% fewer false positives than the industry standard. Windward delivers independent, explainable risk recommendations based on best-in-class behavioral analysis, so teams move quickly without over-escalating or missing real exposure.
Leverage patented AI models that uncover deceptive shipping behavior, including GNSS manipulation, dark activities, cargo-origin inconsistencies, and ship-to-ship activity. Go beyond static lists with intelligence that reflects how vessels actually operate.
Make confident decisions with behavioral and risk insight across maritime and non-maritime entities, paired with independent, high-quality ownership data. Windward provides the context teams need to respond to due diligence, compliance scrutiny, and stakeholder trust demands.
Gain real-time visibility into dry bulk and containerized trades, vessel activity, and maritime operations, with dynamic route tracking, milestones, and exception insights. Produce time-stamped, shareable evidence to support audits, claims, investigations, and dispute resolution with confidence.
Clear deals and engagements with confidence. Windward enables fast, defensible screening of vessels and counterparties, followed by continuous monitoring for sanctions exposure, deceptive behavior, and route-level risk, so liability doesn’t surface after the fact.
Maintain control once a deal, service, or shipment is live. Windward keeps assets, trades, and vessels under watch throughout hire periods, service windows, or credit terms, alerting teams to changes that could impact payment, delivery, or exposure.
Turn maritime activity into your commercial advantage. Windward helps teams spot opportunities, anticipate disruption, and align stakeholders around shared intelligence, supporting smarter pricing, faster execution, and stronger margins.
MAI Expert™ brings Windward’s maritime intelligence directly into day-to-day workflows. Purpose-built for commercial teams, it simplifies screening, monitoring, and investigation, turning complex maritime data into clear, shareable insight.
Alexander WendlandThe depth and accuracy of Windward’s AI-driven insights are unmatched, empowering our teams, including front-office personnel, to make faster, better-informed decisions. Ultimately, this enhances our security posture and drives business growth.
Head of Risk & Compliance, Arte Bunkering
Chet RajputWindward has dramatically strengthened our AML framework, allowing us to confidently manage risk and compliance.
Without Windward, targeting this industry would not have been feasible for us.
Head of Complex Client Oversight Operations, Equals Money
Zaahir SullimanAs maritime trade becomes increasingly complex to navigate, our partnership with Windward enables us to meet regulatory expectations and enhances our efforts to improve business operations, reduce risk, and improve compliance across maritime financial trade.
Head of Specialized Finance, Mauritius Commercial Bank
Rory O’Kelly-LynchWindward’s support has been instrumental in streamlining operations and navigating complex compliance challenges.
The transition to Windward significantly reduced our manual workload and provided key insights that were previously unavailable.
Underwriter, Shoreline Ltd.
Susan Rodihan DepuyWindward enabled us to strengthen our screening environment with in-depth behavioral risk analysis and the tool has enhanced several investigations at our bank.
Managing Director, Head of Sanctions Compliance Americas, Société Générale
How does Windward help commercial teams make faster decisions?
Windward delivers intelligence-led risk recommendations based on real-world vessel behavior, ownership context, and trade activity. Instead of relying on static checks, teams receive clear go/no-go guidance supported by explainable evidence, enabling faster approvals with significantly fewer false positives and without unnecessary escalation.
What types of commercial decisions does Windward support?
Windward supports a wide range of commercial decisions, including vessel and counterparty approvals, trade and service engagements, post-engagement monitoring, shipment execution, dispute validation, and opportunity prioritization. The platform is used across pre-deal screening, live operational oversight, and post-event investigation or analysis.
How does Windward support risk and compliance beyond traditional vessel screening?
Traditional screening focuses on static lists and point-in-time data. Windward adds continuous behavioral monitoring, ownership transparency, and contextual risk analysis, allowing teams to understand how exposure evolves over time. This includes detecting deceptive shipping practices, changes in operational behavior, and emerging compliance risk tied to real-world activity, not just registry status.
How does Windward help teams maintain control once a deal or engagement is live?
Windward provides continuous post-engagement monitoring across vessels, trades, and shipments. Teams receive alerts on behavioral changes, route deviations, detentions, sanctions exposure, or operational anomalies that could impact payment, delivery, or liability, ensuring risk visibility does not stop once a deal is approved.
How does Windward support deeper investigation when elevated risk is identified?
When elevated risk is identified, Windward provides built-in investigative tools that allow teams to move seamlessly from screening to analysis. This includes advanced search, behavioral sequencing, Visual Link Analysis, and historical activity replay. Teams can quickly validate vessel behavior, uncover related vessels or entities, and establish context across ownership, movement, and operational patterns, building clear, defensible findings without leaving the platform or relying on fragmented tools.
How does Windward use Remote Sensing Intelligence in commercial workflows?
Remote Sensing Intelligence provides independent visual and signal-based confirmation of maritime activity in complex or high-risk cases. Commercial teams use satellite imagery and RF data to verify vessel location, confirm ship-to-ship activity, validate port calls, and support disputes, audits, or escalations with time-stamped, objective evidence.
Can Windward help validate trade documents and shipment reality?
Yes. Windward supports document validation by correlating Bills of Lading, voyage milestones, and declared trade details against observed vessel behavior and movement. This helps commercial teams detect inconsistencies, reduce fraud risk, and ensure documentation aligns with operational reality before exposure materializes.
How does Windward support containerized and shipment-level visibility?
Windward provides near real-time visibility into containerized shipments, tracking milestones, delays, deviations, and risk signals across ports and routes. This enables teams to anticipate disruption, protect delivery commitments, and maintain oversight throughout execution, not just at approval.
How does Windward help identify new business opportunities and market shifts?
Windward’s Business Intelligence capabilities analyze vessel movements, port activity, and trading behavior to surface emerging hotspots, shifts in demand, and operational patterns. Commercial teams use these insights to prioritize opportunities, adjust strategy, and align stakeholders around shared, data-backed intelligence.
Who typically uses Windward on the commercial side?
Windward is used by traders, shipowners, bunkering companies, marine service providers, insurers, and financial institutions. While use cases vary, all rely on Windward to reduce friction, cut false positives, maintain control during execution, and make faster, defensible decisions in high-volume, high-risk environments.
How does MAI Expert™ support day-to-day commercial workflows?
MAI Expert™ delivers instant, explainable summaries of vessel behavior, shipment status, and risk context directly within commercial workflows. It supports screening, monitoring, investigation, and communication by turning complex maritime data into clear, shareable outputs that help teams move faster with confidence.
What makes Windward different from traditional commercial risk or monitoring tools?
Windward combines maritime-specific behavioral intelligence, multi-source data, investigation tools, and visual verification in a single environment. Rather than treating risk, operations, and opportunity as separate workflows, Windward enables commercial teams to manage all three through intelligence that reflects how maritime trade actually operates.
