Banking on burnt fingers– financing used plant and equipment

04/10/2009

 

Tim Purbrick, The National Plant & Equipment Register Tim Purbrick writes that according to the Home Office more than £1million of plant and equipment is stolen weekly in the United Kingdom.  Opportunist criminals, of the “hook up and pull” variety, convert stolen equipment into cash often at their earliest opportunity, and often for considerably less than its market value.  Serious organised criminals are probably already in the plant world, and target specific plant types and even makes for export and identity changes, while fraudsters wake up in the morning with the sole intent of defrauding a bank, insurer or plant hire company.

Equipment is stolen at any time from any where.  Most of it is used in places where the site, yard or farm security equates to that of a wet paper bag, so it is easy for the criminals to access the equipment.  Then there is almost no security on the equipment itself – a universal key, bent nail or Swiss Army knife starts most machines, no immobilisers, no tracking devices and no door locks – which makes it easy for criminals to drive equipment away from its wet paper bag.  

Moving on, there is no concept of due diligence for theft in the used equipment trade or by banks or insurers, so it is easy for criminals to dispose of stolen equipment in a market which checks the equipment’s make, model, hours run, date of manufacture and general condition, but not the identity, before it trades. 

Of course, equipment theft is not a priority for the police.  It is not a target set for Chief Constables by the Home Office or Policing Authorities.  This means that there is little training in equipment identification for police officers which means equipment is largely ignored as it travels along the national roads network or is exported from the UK.  All in all, the only group doing well in this Vicious Circle of equipment theft is the criminal group who are contentedly making hay while the sun is shining as they push stolen equipment in at one end of the trade and get clean cash out of the other end.

So what?  Every bank and finance house in this market is financing stolen plant and equipment because the due diligence for theft that they are currently carrying out when they finance used equipment is inadequate. Read the full story about The National Plant & Equipment Register solution addresses this problem, in November’s LeasingWorld journal Special Feature, Asset Management.

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