Cargo theft
Theft of goods during transport or intermediate storage, by break-in or by carrier identity fraud; it has become one of the leading loss drivers in inland cargo insurance.
Cargo theft takes two forms. The first is physical: trucks broken into at rest areas, whole trailers driven off, warehouses burgled, with well-known hot spots along major European and US routes. The second, rising sharply, is fraudulent. So-called strategic theft consists of impersonating a legitimate carrier, on an online freight exchange or through a spoofed email address, to be entrusted with a load that will never be delivered. The goods leave, with all documents in order, for a fence's warehouse. Preferred targets are high-value goods that are easy to resell: electronics, pharmaceuticals, spirits, car parts, food. For insurance, theft raises several questions. The carrier's liability is capped by conventions, in international road transport at an amount per kilogram far below the value of an electronics load, which shifts most of the loss onto the owner's cargo insurance. Carrier fraud sometimes falls under crime insurance rather than transport insurance, depending on whether the goods were stolen or voluntarily handed to a fraudster. And prevention requirements, secure parking, real-time tracking, subcontractor vetting, are becoming conditions of cover.
Hypothetical case: a game console maker entrusts a 900,000 euro load to a carrier found on a freight exchange, whose identity had been stolen. The load disappears. The road transport convention would cap the real carrier's liability at a few tens of thousands of euros; the maker's cargo insurance pays the loss, then examines whether the exclusion for voluntary handover to a third party applies.
Follow the research
One letter a week. First, the week's underwriting note, when one is published: a dated, argued decision, signed by Paul Bernardski. Then what the observatory published on cyber risk, political risk and insurance. No account, no tracking.
No spam, one-click unsubscribe, no data ever sold.