THE EXPORTER’S REQUIRED ALLY
With more than 10 years of experience in the cargo transportation and insurance business, RSK Group have become a company with sound knowledge of its market, advising their clients and offering them the security they need.
Without a doubt, the maritime and air transport continue being the key means to exchange millions of products worldwide so, considering the current scenario the industry faces, it is vital to have expert solutions and eyes that allow protecting the exporters’ interests in the case of cargo incidents, advising them in the indemnity processes before the insurance companies, and carrying out the recovery processes from liable third parties.
RSK Group have positioned themselves as a company with sound knowledge of its market, accompanying their clients and offering them the security they need for more than 10 years. They currently have offices in Chile, Peru and the United Kingdom, handling more than 40 million fruit boxes and more than 40 thousand tonnes of fresh salmon.
Claudio Aguilar, CEO of RSK Group, says that their objectives have always been focused on small and medium-sized companies because they understand this segment is where their work is most valued and needed. He adds that it has been a long journey, but full of enriching experiences, that have created strong relationships with many exporters throughout the years, mainly based on trust, a job well done and great professionalism.
Claudio, Merchant Officer, Business Administrator graduate from Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, has long-standing experience in the maritime field that has allowed him to develop a very particular vision of the fruit business, within which he was a pioneer to create a service that allowed to efficiently manage German cargo policies.
He adds that all through his life he has always undertaken great challenges and set personal goals, that he is motivated by complex things, which require analysis, strategy and a global vision to understand the problem and find a solution. Likewise, he says that it is the key of the success that they have achieved. He smiles when he says it is not chance that he decided to move to London just when the greatest pandemic in history started. They arrived on 19 March 2020, with no farewells, and three days later the first lockdown started in the United Kingdom. He states that all this process has been a great personal, family and professional challenge, but they have managed to offer a much more efficient service to their clients, among others, eliminating the different time zones between continents.
Solutions needed for the fruit industry
Even though they initially focused on the management of cargo policies, with an excellent outcome for their clients, in 2018 the challenge was bigger: Their aim was to generate a global integration regarding the operating system of the cargo policies. Obtaining compensations claimed on the basis of the merits of the very claim was not sufficient; they had to manage to keep the premiums at steady prices, year after year, so they did not increase due to the incident rate.
Challenges
Dealing directly with Germany without going through local offices and maintaining direct contact with surveyors worldwide has allowed them to significantly reduce the response times to coordinate the surveys and achieve a more expedite claim adjustment.
For RSK Group, the events related to the pandemic and port operations that took place in 2020-21 have affected the cargo coverages, mainly in the German market. Restrictions have been incorporated to the delay coverage (more than 10 days), with sub-limits that shall not disappear in the next 5 or 7 years. The most affected will be small and medium-sized exporters that do not have the necessary volume to obtain competitive tariffs and shall have the greatest restrictions in their coverages.
For this reason, RSK Group is now prepared to offer the exporters an additional service, for those cases that have no coverage within the current insurance terms. Claudio Aguilar explains that they are prepared to “shield” a cargo claim, to maximise its recovery before the maritime carrier, acting from the moment the incident is reported, generating direct agreements between the surveying companies and the exporter, making sure that there are no mistakes in the survey process, cargo destruction or loss calculation.
Also, RSK Group is working hard on the diversification of the business, managing new products in the perishable goods market. Its executive comments that they have been pioneers in offering coverage to the fresh products of the salmon market that are carried by air, professionalising the already existing indemnity systems, using the insurance companies as a temporary help for the compensation, but acting strongly on the recovery against the air lines. The results have evidenced an effective control of the incident rate, which has been directly reflected on the insurance premiums.
