TT Club is further increasing its efforts to deliver more of its long-established guidance to transport operators on managing their protection against theft and fraud. In Series 2 of its successful podcast, TT Live, risk management experts discuss current trends in criminal activity that target cargo in transit and storage. The six episodes cover such aspects of the problem as fraud, the insider threat, theft strategies, secure parking for vehicles and the targeting of depots and warehouses.
All the new episodes, along with those from Series 1, and the extensive library of written advice from TT are available as free downloads on the insurer’s specially designed Supply Chain Security webpage. TT Live is also available on Spotify, Apple, Google and many other podcast streaming services.
Mike Yarwood is TT’s managing director, loss prevention. He hosts the podcasts and comments, “The current freight transport environment features higher than normal volumes of cargo movement across all modes on land, sea and in air, as well as significant disruption to well-established routings and methods of transport. Added to these facets are increased inventories of certain goods at many locations and more sub-contracting activity, potentially employing less reliable entities. All these factors allow well-organised criminal organisations to exploit security weaknesses along the supply chain.”
Accompanying Yarwood on the podcasts is David Thompson of Signum Services, the in-house investigative arm of TT’s managers, Thomas Miller & Co. Ltd. His career spans 30 years as a detective with London’s Metropolitan Police and a further eight as an investigator with Signum. “Organised crime has never been so organised,” says Thompson. “Much cargo crime is perpetrated by well-oiled business-like machines that target goods that are in market demand and easily converted into cash. They are well-informed and adapt quickly to new transport trends, spotting opportunities with intelligence and resource.”
Among identified trends apparent during the recent lockdowns has been a move away from the theft of higher value, more easily traced goods, such as electronics and domestic appliances, to food and drink commodities that have had a ready market. Thieves have also noted and exploited the congestion in the supply chain that has increased the use of temporary warehousing and storage sites that are not always as secure as established premises. The second series of TT’s podcast addresses these along with a range of other risk pinch points.
Keeping ahead of, or more often, up with the variable modus operandi that criminal organisations employ, and combating the threats to cargo assets they enable, are major tasks and are the challenges that TT Club’s loss prevention resources are posed to face through increased awareness and guidance on protective action.