Welcome to our webinar today. Our webinar is about how to cut your US shipping cost by 30% in 90 days. I’m Tam from G.O.L Solution, and we’re a trade compliance expert that helps you navigate and stay updated with the latest export/import laws around the world — including the US, Asia and Europe. This webinar is specifically designed for NVOCCs, freight forwarders and 3PLs that wish to expand their operations into the US market from overseas.

If you’re already shipping US shipments through a reseller or another consolidator, you might know there are a few rules you need to meet in order to ship directly from the US and sign a contract directly with the carriers — you’ll need an FMC licence. Without it, you’ll pay a higher price because you have to go through a reseller. You can’t issue your house bill of lading directly under your own company, and you also have to file customs declarations like ACE directly, or indirectly through third-party vendors. In this framework, we’ll show you how to slash cost through FMC licensing and eliminate costly intermediaries by accessing carriers directly.

Before we get started, a couple of notes: feel free to ask questions about FMC in the chat and we’ll get back to you within one business day. And throughout this webinar I’ll ask a few questions about your company — the usual information we ask when a client onboards with us. Give us as much as you can, and after this webinar our team will give you a free assessment of your FMC licensing cost, customised to your company profile.

If you’ve shipped to the US before, you might already recognise some of these hidden costs. If you’re a freight forwarder without an FMC licence, you have to buy freight from a reseller, an NVOCC, or a consolidator — and that structure creates hidden costs that make your pricing less competitive. First: intermediary markups. Consolidators, NVOCCs or resellers can add 20 to 40% to your shipping cost, and that erodes your margin. Second: the carrier relationship. Ocean carriers only sign direct contracts with parties that hold an FMC licence, so without one you’re limited in flexibility and pay a premium rate without premium service. Third: documentation dependency. Without an FMC licence you have to use your agent’s house bill of lading, and filing AMS or ACE through a third party typically costs around eight times more than filing independently yourself.

To remove those hidden costs, you need the FMC licence — issued to foreign-based carriers, NVOCCs and freight forwarders that want to operate and sell US freight. It gives you direct carrier access with no intermediary in between, and you get the premium service that comes with that direct relationship. You get house bill of lading authority, so you control documentation end to end. You get independent filing — submitting AMS and ACE yourself, under your own name, instead of through a third party. And you get verifiable credibility: licensed NVOCCs and OTIs show up on the FMC’s own website, which any partner can check before doing business with you. This is a real advantage for businesses that want to stand out and make US shipping a core part of their service offering.

Looking at the cost comparison between licensed and unlicensed NVOCCs, the container rate is the biggest factor — a licensed forwarder saves roughly $1,600 per container on US shipping rates. At 100 containers a month, that’s on the order of $160,000 in monthly savings. And because you’re now working directly with carriers, your documentation, handling and customs costs drop too. These are real results from clients we’ve registered: we’ve helped more than 30 NVOCCs across Asia get their FMC licence, and within 12 weeks they realised more than 28% in savings, reduced shipment processing time by 65%, and cut documentation costs by 80%.

Here’s the 90-day transformation timeline. Weeks one to two: we prepare your application — gathering financial statements, your house bill of lading form, and other information like insurance and operating history. If you work with us, we review and format everything and give you a cost estimate for your company profile before submitting. One thing to know about FMC licence cost: it’s based on your company profile, and your annual premium is determined by your financial performance and other factors. Part of our service is negotiating with bond issuers to get you the best possible rate.

Weeks three to eight: we submit the FMC application and arrange all the required bonds, along with your SCAC code and importer ID. While the application is under review, you can already start negotiating with carriers directly. Once approval comes in around week nine or ten, you finalise carrier contracts and can start shipping and selling US freight. From there it’s ongoing maintenance — you need to publish and disclose your pricing through tariff filing, and submit customs documentation through ACE filings. We help set up the software your team needs to maintain this throughout the year.

Here’s what you need, in no particular order, to obtain and maintain a non-US-based NVOCC’s FMC licence. First, the FMC licence itself — which requires the other pieces in place first. You need an NVOCC bond valued at $150,000. This is a financial security required by the FMC. A common misconception is that this means you pay $150,000 every year to the bond issuer — that’s not correct. You only pay a premium, a percentage of that bond value, similar to how insurance works: your coverage might be $1 million, but your premium is a much smaller amount. The bond itself is essentially insurance for the agency, not for you — if you face a fine from the FMC, the FMC deducts it from the bond issuer, and the bond issuer then collects that amount back from you. $150,000 is the coverage ceiling the bond issuer provides.

You’ll also need a Customs Type 3 bond valued at $50,000 to file ACE declarations, a SCAC code to identify your business, house bill of lading registration with the FMC, and an importer ID to file customs declarations. Once licensed, you have ongoing monthly maintenance — publishing and maintaining your rates for the US market through tariff filing software, and submitting customs declarations through ACE, which also requires software to fulfil.

If you work with G.O.L, we offer two packages. Standard gives you an initial consultation based on your company profile to determine the best possible rate, then we handle the full submission from start to finish — there’s nothing for you to do except wait for the good news. Once your licence is set up, we also provide the software so your team can handle ongoing duties like tariff and ACE filing yourselves. Premium includes the same consultation and setup, but we also handle the ongoing compliance filing on your behalf — tariff filing, ACE, ISF for shipments transiting through Canada, all of it. The difference is simply who maintains it after setup: your team, or ours.

A few important notes on fees. The annual fee includes expert consultation, the application process and renewal support — every year we resubmit your company profile to determine your premium based on your current financials, and if you qualify for better rates under certain conditions, we’ll guide you through that. It includes 72 filings per year covering tariff and ACE filings combined; anything beyond that is billed at $20 per filing. Once your annual premium is determined, a 3% payment processing fee applies on top to process payments to vendors. And if you’d rather not maintain your own ACE self-service account, we offer an alternative filing option using our company account instead — so you don’t need to hold the $50,000 Customs Type 3 bond yourself for that purpose.

Here’s the five-step FMC licensing process if you go through our service. Step one: documentation preparation — we gather financial statements, bills of lading and your corporate profile, and assess whether there are opportunities to get you a better rate. Step two: we handle the full submission, from bond insurance setup through FMC review. While that’s happening, you can start negotiating with carriers directly. Step three is that carrier negotiation running in parallel. Step four: finalisation of your contract once the licence is approved — the whole process typically takes 60 to 90 days. Step five is ongoing licence maintenance: using your FMC-approved bill of lading on every US shipment, disclosing your service contracts and quotes through tariff filing software, filing ACE, AMS and ISF for every shipment (self-service or through us), and training your team on these procedures — we provide written guidance to make sure your team understands their responsibilities. This matters because failing to maintain the licence can lead to fines or even licence revocation from the FMC.

As mentioned, we’re not only FMC experts — we’re trade compliance experts for the US market generally. We help navigate FDA regulations for food, medical device, cosmetic and supplement products, which might not be your company directly but could be your customers. We help businesses shipping chemical products through EPA registration, and with other state and federal agency guidance. We can also connect you with the right customs broker, and help you understand and optimise duty and tariff exposure, including de minimis and Type 86 duty-free regulations.

And that’s the end of the webinar. If you’d like to start your transformation today — with up to 30% cost reduction, 90-day implementation and a guarantee of approval — you can book your consultation. If you put your information in the chat during this session, our team will reach out within one business day to answer your questions. You can also reach us directly using our Singapore number or by email — our team is based globally, with offices in the US, Singapore, Vietnam and other locations. We hope to talk to you soon about how we can help reduce your cost and get you started in the US market. Thank you for watching, and I hope to see you in the next one. Bye.