All-Risks Warranty - FERCAM
All-Risks Warranty

All-Risks Warranty

Liability limitations of the carrier

The person who entrusts the carrier with his/her goods often thinks that the carrier is liable for the possible damage to the goods (loss, theft, etc.). As a matter of fact, the carrier is only the receiver of the shipping mandate by the sending party (owner of the goods) and fulfils a transport contract on behalf of the sending party, but does not respond for the execution of the contract. The carrier, when operating as such and therefore executing part or the entire transport, avails itself of the pertaining liability limitations, for which we give a brief overview concerning the major kinds of transport:
 
  • € 1,00 / Kg (Legislative Decree 286/2005 – road transportation within the Italian territory)
  • 8,33 SDR (*) / Kg (CMR – road transportation on international territory)
  • 19 SDR (*) / Kg (Montreal Agreement – air transportation)
  • 2 SDR (*) / Kg or 666,7 SDR (*) for each load unit (Bruxelles Agreement and L’Aja-Visby rules – maritime transportation)
  • 17 SDR (*) / Kg (CIM Agreement – rail transportation)
  • (*) SDR = Special Drawing Right (for example, as at 30.01.17 €1,28 – you can check the exchange rate at http://www.if.org/external/np/fin/data/param_rms_mth.aspx)
The regulation providing for the above mentioned maximums also lists a series of reasons excluding the carrier’s liability (for example, the robbery normally falls into the fluke or case of force majeure domain).
The goods are exposed to various kinds of risk that the carrier cannot completely eliminate even if the precautions and  safety measures adopted are getting more and more appropriate.
 
FERCAM offers the possibility to obviate to the limitations of liability of the carrier established in the above-mentioned regulations, by providing the client with a form called “All Risk warranty”. By compiling the requested data (among those, the value of the goods and its relative weight), in the event of damage at the expense of the company, this will take responsibility for reimbursing the real value of the damaged goods object of the transport. 
 
Being it a supplementary service to the main mandate, its request other than being provided in writing by the sending party requires the subsequent accordance of the compensation to cover the necessary responsibilities for the management of the documents, and the risk assumed by the company in the event of accidents at the expenses of the company.
 
Only material damages to the goods are eligible for the compensation. Allowances and overdrafts are usually provided for in the event of damage.
 
The value of the goods for which the client requests an extension of the liability of FERCAM in the event of a damage at its expenses has to be correctly determined, since in the event of damages, the insured value will be used as reference for the calculation of the compensation. It would be therefore pointless to declare a higher value than the actual, since in the event of damage only the actual value of the goods is taken into consideration. Declaring lower values to reduce the compensation to be paid to the company would be counter-productive in the event of an accident, since the compensation would be proportionally reduced according to the value declared in the form. The declaration of the value of the goods for which the client requests an extension of the liability must be as correct and consistent with the actual value as possible and to this end also packaging costs, customs duties, rental, necessary costs and responsibilities, and normally the transportation costs to the final destination are usually taken into consideration. It is also possible to add a percentage of the expected income stemming from the sale of the goods (usually 10%).
 
ATTENTION: all of the above has a merely descriptive and exemplifying purpose and it does not imply any kind of contractual obligation, neither implicit nor tacit.