SAFES
SPONSORED BY KEYPRINT
I NEED A SAFE – BUT HOW
MUCH CAN I KEEP IN IT?
Compared with the prominent, high tech side of the security industry, safes have
a relatively low profile, yet safe manufacturers have expertise no-one can afford
to ignore. Our expert Safes correspondent MIKE PALMER tells us more.
It is a simple fact of life that the
relatively ‘low tech’ hardware side of
security, that is to say lock and safe
makers, are the poor cousins of our
industry. You do not have to look very
far to see the truth of this observation:
visit IFSEC at the NEC, for example,
and you will find remarkably few lock
manufacturers, no safe manufacturers
at all and just a couple of specialist safe
distributors – we simply cannot afford to
be there.
But just because our side of the industry
has a low profile, it does not mean that we
do not have anything relevant to teach our
‘high tech’ colleagues. The truth is that
they ignore our expertise at their peril.
‘Ignore our expertise
at your peril’
The Validator & Base ENI, is marketed
in the UK by Fichet Bauche and is one of
the few models to have been fully tested
& certified to EN1143-2 Grade III.
To read more, visit www.locksmithjournal.co.uk
Take the rapid growth in the market for
electronic cash deposit and cash recycling
systems. The advanced technology
present in these systems must have
taken huge chunks of cash out of R &
D budgets. These ultra-sophisticated
machines recognise foreign currencies
and identify the denomination of a bank
notes in a twinkling of an eye, storing
them instantly in sealed cassettes. They
dispense just as quickly, incorporating the
latest IP communications technology and
advanced computer software.
There are significant markets ready
and waiting for this type of product and
manufacturer’s product literature tells
them everything they need to know about
all their remarkably advanced features.
Well, almost everything. One of the
questions a customer inevitably asks is,
“How much can I keep in it overnight?” At
which point is seems as though someone
licks a finger, holds it in the air and replies,
“Oooh, about £20,000 to £30,000”
Of course, they are factually correct.
You could quite easily leave £30,000 in it
overnight. You could probably squeeze
in a bit more if you tried really hard, but
that’s not what the customer was asking.
They’re not interested in the capacity;
what they really needed to know was,
“How much will my insurer allow me to
leave in it overnight?”
The answer to this question is
substantially different. When specialist
insurance surveyors took a closer look at
the physical construction of some of these
extremely expensive systems, it became
clear that little if any consideration had
been given to their burglar resistance.
In fact, some of them offered no more
protection than a reasonably priced key
cabinet. Other companies could indeed
provide optional containers that were
actually tested and rated according to
EN standards – it was there in the small
print – but insurers were under the
impression that it was left to the customer
to request the option rather than being
offered it proactively by the producer.
Consequently, if the user was not
specifically asked what level of indemnity
they would expect their insurer to provide,
they were sold the bog standard model.
One senior manager with a major insurer
said, “Some users were asking us to insure
up to £60,000 in one of these standard
systems. When we told them that the
maximum cover we were prepared to
extend was just £1,000 – the same as we
would give a lockable filing cabinet, they
were more than a little disappointed.”
Certainly, if the unit is to be used
solely as a ‘day safe’ with the cash being
removed at the end of the working day and
transferred to a fully insured cash safe,
it is possible that they could be insured
for a £20-30,000 risk. If the cash is not
transferred and remains in the deposit or
recycling system overnight, it simply won’t
be insured.
THE EUROPEAN STANDARD – EN1143-2
Had the designers taken time out to
discuss this with anyone familiar with
safe-making their attention would have
been immediately drawn to EN1143-2,
a standard for testing and rating safes
with deposit facilities. Deposit safes
successfully tested by approved test
houses are certified and rated from
Grade 0 to Grade VI with corresponding
overnight cash limits from £6,000
to £150,000. Any safe maker would
have taken one look at these standard
containers and instantly advised the
developer that, as it stood, their system
was only insurable for £1,000 overnight –
not much use in the cash office of a busy
bus terminal or superstore.
‘Only insurable for £1,000’
Continues on next Page >
THE SEP/OCT 2013 ISSUE
SPONSORED BY ADVANCED KEYS
73