BENCHMARKS · PARTNER PERFORMANCE
Partner RFQ response time, and what a partner's record should show.
A partner desk lives on two questions: how fast will this agent answer the RFQ, and how have they performed when it mattered? Here is what is on record about both — the closest published response-time data, the benchmark that doesn't exist yet, and the network scale and payment-protection figures worth knowing before you award a lane. Every figure from a named source, self-reported numbers labelled, unpublished fees stated as unpublished.
SOURCES: OFFICIAL NETWORK PAGES · FREIGHTOS · FFFAI · NAFL · CHECKED JULY 2026
Partner RFQ response time: the only public analogue
The number this page is built around — how fast partners answer each other’s RFQs — does not exist in public. The closest analogue is shipper-side: Freightos has mystery-shopped forwarder quote responsiveness for years, and its figures are the only published context available.
| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ~90 hrs | average quote response time from top global forwarders in shipper-side mystery shopping | Freightos research (shipper-side) |
| 35% | share of large forwarders that responded at all to an SMB mystery-shop enquiry | Freightos research (shipper-side) |
| 57 hrs | average manual quote turnaround in an earlier study | Freightos (2018) |
| ~43% | of freight sales executives' time reportedly spent on pricing and quotes | Third-party figure, origin unverified — treat as directional only |
ALL FIGURES SHIPPER-SIDE · NO PARTNER-TO-PARTNER EQUIVALENT EXISTS · UNVERIFIED FIGURE FLAGGED IN-LINE
No public benchmark exists for partner-to-partner RFQ response times — how fast agents quote each other, how many replies a five-agent RFQ actually gets, or how much a polite chase improves either number. We searched; the Freightos figures above are shipper-facing and the closest thing on record. Our partner-desk benchmark will publish the missing numbers from live, anonymized forwarder desks: median hours to first partner quote, response rate per network membership, and chase-to-reply conversion. Until then, treat any partner response-time figure you hear as a guess.
Network scale is not partner performance
Until response times are measured, it is tempting to judge a partner by the size of the network it belongs to. By one published directory count, more than 250 forwarder networks exist (Gemslinks). Nearly every comparison you will find ranks them the way a brochure would — because it was written by a network selling membership. The table below is just the official numbers, taken from each network’s own pages in July 2026. They are self-reported, and nobody independently audits them.
| Network | Scale (self-reported) | Model | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCAworld | 13,153 offices · 197 countries | Open membership; the largest by office count | Not published — confirmed on WCA's own application page. Third-party figures circulate; unverified, so we don't repeat them. |
| JCtrans | 12,000+ paid members · ~770,000 registered accounts | Open, tiered; GCP premium tier (2,000+ members) gates protection | GCP tier pricing not published |
| Globalia | 210+ members · 114 countries | Exclusive: one member per territory | Membership varies; PPP protection add-on €500/yr |
| Conqueror | One agent per city, worldwide | Exclusive: one agent per city | Varies by city size; branch offices 50%; referral discount 25% (per official page) |
| Digital Freight Alliance | 7,000+ members (2024 press) · 8,000+ claimed on site · 190+ countries | Platform network backed by DP World | Free Standard tier; Premium pricing not published |
| MarcoPoloLine | 436 offices · 86 countries | Deliberately mid-size | — |
FIGURES FROM OFFICIAL NETWORK PAGES, CHECKED JULY 2026 · ALL SELF-REPORTED · UNPUBLISHED FEES STATED AS UNPUBLISHED
Compare with care: the units differ. WCA counts offices, JCtrans counts members and registered accounts, Globalia counts one member per territory — a bigger number is not automatically a bigger network, and none of these figures says anything about how members perform. That last part is the layer your own data has to supply.
Payment protection, programme by programme
Protection is the strongest practical argument for network membership, and the programs differ far more than the badge-swapping at conferences suggests. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only neutral, side-by-side comparison of these programs published anywhere on the web — every other program page is written by the network operating the program. If another neutral one appears, we’ll link it.
| Program | Coverage | Structure | Program cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold Medallion (WCAworld) | US$100k per claim same-network · US$50k cross-network | Per-claim caps, backed by a US$3M annual pool | Not published |
| Cooperation Risk Protection (JCtrans) | Up to US$150k | Gated to the GCP premium tier (2,000+ members) | GCP tier pricing not published |
| Payment Protection Plan (Globalia) | US$25k per debtor | Per-debtor cap | €500/yr |
| Payment Protection Program (Conqueror) | US$25k per debtor | Per-debtor cap | €500/yr |
| Digital Freight Alliance | No protection program listed on official pages | — | — |
| MarcoPoloLine | No protection program listed on official pages | — | — |
COVERAGE FIGURES FROM OFFICIAL PROGRAM PAGES, CHECKED JULY 2026 · UNPUBLISHED PRICING STATED AS UNPUBLISHED
The structural differences matter more than the headline numbers. A per-claim cap and a per-debtor cap are different instruments: one limits a single loss, the other limits your total exposure to one counterparty. And an annual pool means protection is a shared, finite resource — not an insurance policy. The vocabulary behind this table — Gold Medallion, GCP, PartnerPay — is defined in the glossary. The practical takeaway: protection follows the membership, not the partner, and the cap is the product — so read the programme terms before the lane rather than after a default.
How partner performance is judged in India and the GCC
Two regional facts shape how partners are judged more than any global figure. In India, import trade runs disproportionately on nominated, routing-order cargo — control sits with destination agents — and vendor relationships run on empanelment: formal panels of approved agents, refreshed periodically. In the GCC, membership stacking is the trust signal: a Dubai forwarder presenting FIATA, WCA, JCtrans and NAFL memberships together is doing the work a balance sheet does elsewhere — and the Digital Freight Alliance is headquartered in the region (DP World, Dubai).
| Body | Scale (self-reported) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| FFFAI (India) | 30 member associations · ~6,500 customs brokers · 110,000+ employees | India's apex federation of customs broker and freight forwarder associations |
| NAFL (UAE) | ~109 associate members · 400+ member companies | The UAE's national freight and logistics association |
FIGURES AS PUBLISHED BY FFFAI AND NAFL, CHECKED JULY 2026 · SELF-REPORTED
The implication for a partner desk: in India, the path to import volume runs through the agents who control nominations, so your performance record is your pitch; in the GCC, your memberships are your handshake, so your own standing in those networks is not bookkeeping — it’s credibility.
Run your own numbers.
The benchmarks above are the industry's. The calculator turns yours — lanes quoted, RFQs per month, hours spent chasing — into what the manual partner hunt costs a year.
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