ARC360 Corporate Partner, NWVA (Nationwide Assistance Group) has introduced a new Stolen Vehicle Recovery division to tackle the rapidly increasing levels of vehicle theft across the UK.
Having successfully supported police forces across the country for a number of years in the recovery of stolen vehicles, NWVA has now introduced its own all-encompassing service to fill the void as ever-increasing demand on officers and policies under review sees a change in how vehicle crime being addressed.
Heading up the division and joining the business from 10 January is Paul Gerrish who has 23 years’ experience working for the Essex Police, the last nine of which spent on the Stolen Vehicle Intelligence Unit (SVIU) driving this area of work that encompassed a wide variety of workstreams, including stolen vehicle examination, tracking and recovery – to name but a few.
Paul and Essex Police’s SVIU – one of the most successful vehicle crime units in the UK – have worked very closely with NWVA in recent years in a bid to tackle the issue managing to recover or identify over £40million worth of assets in the last 2 years alone.
Paul said, “We have had some very positive results in last number of years working with the support of the NWVA group – recovering millions of pounds worth of vehicle assets within Essex and the home counties – but this really is just the tip of the iceberg. The issue is vast and growing at a national and international level.
We know other forces in the UK are faced with far higher volumes of vehicle crime that we do in Essex and are seeing as much as 87% increases in cloned vehicles. With changes to how vehicle crime is viewed, this new NWVA service really is much needed.”
Part of the far broader criminal activity, the vast majority of the vehicles which are stolen – in many cases today as a result of electronic compromise (often referred to as keyless theft) are either cloned onto false identities for re-sale or export, stolen to be broken down into component parts or used in further criminal activity – never to be seen again.
The cost to the motor insurance industry is more than £1.54bn (2023) per annum.
Paul continued, “Vehicle theft is often referred to as a victimless crime – it’s not, and costs everyone – be it financially, physically or personally. From the figures we see motor insurers are faced with a challenge which, unless tackled, is set to grow exponentially in the coming years given the un-recovered theft levels.”
NWVA provides a 24 hr service and once notified of any theft, will be looking to secure the vehicle within an hour, with recovery following shortly thereafter. This rapid interception helps ensure the criminal ‘activity’ is halted, vehicles are recovered, reducing risk of loss and claims. On a more personal note, we seek to secure people’s personal possessions that may be within their stolen vehicle and returned to them in an expeditious manner. The upset this criminality causes can therefore be minimised and made less traumatic for clients. We will also be looking at innovative ways to support our work as well as utilising skills learnt over many years to deliver unrivaled support and response.
This service will in turn release police involvement, if deployed, to deal with other demands upon their limited resources.
“Speed is the key and at NWVA – with our national reach, as well as our international connections – we really can provide a service to benefit all parties,” said Paul.
Paul’s experience has seen him previously actively support and work with well-known industry stakeholders such as Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota UK and Ford Motor Company as well as AXA’s Retail Motor Team in their quest to tackle organized vehicle crime.
To find out more about the new division contact Paul at paul.gerrish@nwva.co.uk
