TT Club Pinpoints Risks for Logistics Operators
The overwhelming majority of insurance claims analysed by TT Club have showed that costly damages and loss, as well as serious bodily injury can be prevented or significantly minimised by sensible and concerted risk management efforts.
Speaking at this week’s TOC Container Supply Chain Asia Conference in Singapore, TT Club’s Phillip Emmanuel drew attention to the wide-range of causes leading to insurance claims by transport and logistics operators. “While these causes are varied; ranging from theft and poor maintenance of equipment to bad cargo handling and packing and clerical error; they share in common the fact that through good training, the employment of best practices and detailed monitoring and checking procedures, the vast majority are avoidable,” emphasised Emmanuel.
As a leading freight transport insurer, TT Club is in a prime position to both identify the causes of risk in the supply chain and to proffer advice on how such issues can be managed to ensure a reduction. Such action, of course not only saves staff from injury and assets from damage but reduces insurance overheads, maintains operational efficiency by minimising interruptions and delays and keeps customers satisfied.
In making the presentation to industry leaders at the Conference Emmanuel, who is TT Club’s Regional Director, Asia-Pacific utilised a claims analysis carried out by the Club on data received over the past seven years. Including bodily injury, property and liability, over 2,600 claims from transport and logistics operators were analysed. A low percentage, just 5%, were caused by the weather with a quarter being due to poor maintenance of property or equipment and a large proportion, some 66% down to failures in some facet of the operation.
Emmanuel was at pains to highlight the lessons to be learned from analysis of these operational issues in particular. “Here we found that over a half of incidents involved the internal systems and processes of the operator and another quarter were due to theft. These types of claim are most assuredly to be placed in the category of preventable,” he said.
Transport and logistics operators are strongly urged to employ effective monitoring and checking procedures, a regular training regime and maintain industry best practice for safety and security. The conference presentation exemplified a number of situations were cargo which was badly stowed, packed, loaded incorrectly or otherwise poorly handled caused damage and injury. Examples of miscommunication of information about refrigerated cargo, misdeclaration of hazardous cargo and load weights, inaccurately drafted contracts with sub-contractors and a lack of IT security were all discovered in the analysis.
As a result TT Club can, and frequently does, offer effective advice on loss prevention and risk management as Emmanuel concludes, “Prevention is a combination of safe and physically secure facilities and equipment; rigorous checks and double-checks on paperwork and information flow combined with well-trained, well-motivated employees and trusted partners.”