\n<\/p>\n
Still, the tech isn’t necessarily enough, suggests Mr Holland. <\/p>\n
“To get them back to work became our mission,” he says, as he explains how in late 2021 ARMD launched an insurance product designed specifically for tradespeople.<\/p>\n
The coverage is linked to a special smartphone app.<\/p>\n
It is a digital inventory of every valuable bit of equipment a plumber or builder might have and displays the insurance claim value of each tool. For a new tool, this figure starts at 100% of its retail value and reduces each year by 10%, down to a minimum of 50%, says Mr Chawda.<\/p>\n
Crucially, ARMD aims to pay out genuine claims as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
The firm has over 3,500 users and over 200 tool insurance customers signed up so far and has settled 7 claims in total. The longest of those took just three days.<\/p>\n
There are alternative technologies designed to help combat the effects of tool theft. <\/p>\n
A tool inventory app called The Tool Register, available for smartphones, was listed in a research briefing on tool theft, external<\/span><\/a> published by the House of Commons Library last year, for example. <\/p>\n A spokesman for uWatch, which makes the app, says it has about 500 users. uWatch also offers a security device called The Cube, fitted with a camera as well as motion and location sensors among others.<\/p>\n “There are members who are literally putting cages inside their vehicles,” says Darren Crannis, technical manager at the Electrical Contractors’ Assocation (ECA), which represents 3,000 member companies covering a little over 66,000 individual tradespeople.<\/p>\n Some even choose to put fake logos on their vans, obscuring that they are in a building trade, hiding the fact there could be tools in the vehicle, he says.<\/p>\n Tradespeople may also install covert cameras in vans, apply forensic marking products such as microdots<\/a> to their tools, and label them as protected, for example. And there’s a range of heavy duty locks, vaults and alarm systems to secure equipment whether it is kept in a van or a shed, for instance.<\/p>\n “Have you seen the most recent James Bond where only he can hold his gun and it works?” says Mr Crannis. “That really would be brilliant.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n