Cost, Insurance and Freight

Definition

An Incoterm (2020) applicable only to sea and inland waterway transport where the seller pays the costs and freight to bring the goods to the port of destination, and also provides minimum insurance coverage. Risk transfers to the buyer when the goods are loaded on board the vessel at the port of shipment. CIF is rarely used in time-critical air logistics (which uses CIP instead), but may appear in multimodal shipments where an ocean leg precedes an air-freight emergency diversion.