Chris Southworth: Well, Incoterms have got an
interesting history - is that it was the first rule book created
by ICC. So it really goes back to the origins of ICC actually,
we were created after the World War One, the aftermath of World
War One when there was actually no global trading framework at
that time, you know, companies were either trading on their own
through Royal Charters, or whatever. But in the back end of
the war, there was a sort of a grouping of business leaders,
one of which came from the UK, the chairman, of Natwest Bank to
really kind of set down a framework create the
International Chamber of Commerce and the first rule book
that came out of the ICC was was Incoterms And that was really in
an effort to create a stronger rules based trading system where
everybody was on a level playing field where they could share and
use the same terminology across different jurisdictions, legal
jurisdictions. And so incoterms was, is a key part of our
history. We're 100 years old, that Incoterms isn't far behind.
But ultimately, it's about the they set the rules for all
buyers and sellers of goods. So anyone importing, exporting in
whatever country in the world, they are the sort of global
benchmark of the terminology used to differentiate who
carries risk and cost at any one point of the transaction and
movement of those goods. So really, really important.
Obviously, we're shipping through rail or or shipping
cargo aeroplanes doesn't matter. You know, incoterms are widely
used around the world
Lesley Batchelor OBE: Incoterms are updated every 10 years, and
it's quite a sensible thing - actually, we all know things
become less and less current. And I think at the moment, the
Incoterms we're working with doesn't reflect the way we do
business necessarily. And I think we're trying to move
businesses into accepting that there are maritime incoterms and
multimodal incoterms, which I think is one of the key points
of the new 2020 incoterms.
Chris Southworth: So I think that the critical message is one
check you using the right terms under the 2020 framework that
comes into force on the 1st of January 2020. We've also learned
that the standards in which the sort of training standards in
which companies are accessing is not up to to grade including in
the UK, while they were a leader in the use of incoterms, we're
not using it consistently. So we've really put in place now
national training framework where everybody's within the ICC
is now ICC, accredited at a certain level, just like you
would pass an exam, a university, all our trainers now
have to pass a test and exam. And that's really to sort of
weed out those who are not training properly and not
experienced. But I think the other takeaway from all of this
is, you need to be experienced. It's a bit like a driving test,
you can read the book, and you can apply the theory, but that's
not actually what you need. If you're getting advice as a
company, you need to have someone who's actually been on
the road for a while, been in the trade environment for a
while to understand the scenarios and the likelihood of
what those risks are, and then you'll get much better advice
about which incoterm you should be using.