This piece is by Lyall Cresswell, Founder & CEO of TEG & Trustd
Supply chains have never been better at tracking what moves and when. The gap is who has your freight. At every handover point, from collection to final delivery, the identity of the person physically handling freight is unverified. That is the structural flaw which fraudsters exploit, and it is the businesses that move, ship, and insure freight that see the consequences first.
The core vulnerability is not a technology failure or a process gap. It is an assumption: that submitted documents are genuine. That assumption is the one fraud most reliably exploits in commercial transport insurance. The technology and regulatory infrastructure to close it now exists. Insurers who act early will gain a meaningful competitive advantage over those who wait.
Why transport is especially exposed
Transport supply chains present a near perfect environment for identity fraud. A fragmented carrier base means high value loads are routinely handled by operators several tiers removed from the freight owner. Digital freight matching has accelerated this: truckloads now move without any face to face interaction between 3PLs, forwarders, and their contractors. Time pressure compounds the risk. When fulfilment is time critical, following verification protocol to the letter has to be weighed against the cost of disruption, and shortcuts can become routine.
Email remains the weakest link. It is still the primary method criminals use to deploy fake identities, build trust, and ultimately steal freight or payments. Loss investigators receive multiple identity related fraud alerts every day, and the most common tactic remains phishing emails that impersonate legitimate operators.
The verification gap
Insurers and logistics partners still rely on PDFs, emailed certificates, and manual checks to verify operator identity. That model was never robust. It is now actively dangerous given the ease with which documents can be fabricated or manipulated.
A TEG industry study found that typical 3PL audits cover just 30% of their carrier base on an annual basis. The remaining operators go unchecked. Transport companies entering new territories or relying heavily on spot markets are particularly exposed, where the need to vet new carriers in minutes rather than days leaves little room for due diligence.
The fraud data NaVCIS data shows the total number of recorded freight crimes has remained relatively stable in recent years. However, the value of stolen goods has surged from £68.3 million in 2023 to £111.5 million in 2024. The average value per incident is rising sharply, suggesting criminals are targeting higher value loads.
But these figures represent only the wholesale value of stolen goods. NaVCIS estimates the true cost at between £680 million and £700 million for 2023 alone, once vehicle damage, insurance costs, business disruption, and wider supply chain impact are factored in. Since 2020, the cumulative true cost of freight crime is estimated to have exceeded £1 billion.
Freight liability policies have responded to this threat by limiting the degrees of subcontracting permitted, with some even banning the use of freight exchanges. But this model does not reflect the reality of modern supply chains, which rely on subcontracting to function. Worse, these restrictions are unenforceable without a verifiable chain of custody. The result is that an insurer underwriting a single policyholder is in practice taking on risk across dozens of unknown counterparties, most of whom remain invisible until a claim is made.
What the technology now enables
The most significant change is not simply that better verification tools exist. It is that verification no longer needs to happen in isolation. A verified operator credential can now be recognised across logistics partners, ports, and platforms without being rechecked at every touchpoint. For insurers, this replaces a static document submitted at inception with access to a live verification ecosystem that maintains its integrity throughout the policy term.
Three capabilities underpin this shift.
Biometric identity verification replaces static documents. Facial recognition and location matching confirm that an authorised individual is collecting freight at the right place and time, creating a verifiable chain of custody for every load.
Verifiable digital credentials for insurance certificates eliminate the fraud vector created by unverifiable PDF policy documents. Tamper proof credentials replace documents that become unverifiable the moment they are created, giving shippers, 3PLs, and logistics partners the ability to confirm an operator’s insurance status in seconds.
Continuous monitoring flags policy cancellations and compliance failures before an incident, not after. This shifts the information flow from reactive to preventive.
The principle is simple: verify once, share everywhere.
Implications for claims, underwriting, and fraud
For claims handlers, a verifiable chain of custody either substantiates or contradicts a claim narrative, reducing the cost and time of dispute resolution. For underwriters, continuously maintained identity data changes the quality of risk information available at inception and throughout the policy term, allowing for more accurate pricing of an increasingly complex risk. For fraud teams, tamper proof credentials and biometric verification remove the conditions under which document fraud occurs, rather than simply detecting it after the fact.
The combined picture is one where insurers face both a structural claims gap and a growing identity fraud exposure, and where the tools to address both are now available and independently certified. This is a competitive differentiator today and a compliance expectation tomorrow. Those who act early will benefit from better risk selection and lower fraud exposure. Those who wait will be playing catch up.
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