Scorecard offers charterer payment performance insight: Ardmore joins discussion on INTERTANKO’s commercial data-driven solutions

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Ardmore Shipping’s Chief Commercial Officer, Gernot Ruppelt, recently joined INTERTANKO’s Commercial Manager, Dimitris Dimopoulos, at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London for a seminar on the benefits of INTERTANKO’s Payment Performance System (PPS).

As shipping expands its use of digital and data-driven technology, every corner of the industry is seeing increased levels of transparency and, in turn, accountability. Historically, freight and demurrage are areas of the industry that routinely experiences delays, and payments can often run from 10 to 130 days late. This represents a challenge for shipowners operating within typically tight profit margins and can exacerbate cash flow challenges.

INTERTANKO’s PPS is designed to resolve these issues. The confidential database, developed through comprehensive collection of payment performance data, is exclusive to members, and contains freight and demurrage payment records covering most major tanker charterers worldwide. Developed over five years, the system offers – for the first time in this industry – a way for shipowners to objectively measure potential delays in freight and demurrage payments by individual charterers, or across the sector.

Using this technology, shipowners can provide their chartering team with a data-based decision-making tool to assess – already at the negotiation stage – likely collection times and overall attractiveness of potential contracts. Through use of the system, it is now possible to ascertain which charterers are the best payers, who are slower to pay, and to identify the worst offenders. It can also serve as a collection tool for the claims team, and as a management tool for shipowners to benchmark their own collection and financial performance in relation to the rest of the industry. 

Gernot Ruppelt, Ardmore’s Chief Operating Officer, is Chair of INTERTANKO’s Commercial and Markets Committee and represents Ardmore on the INTERTANKO Council. Speaking at the seminar, Gernot said:

“Freight and demurrage levels are up, and so are fuel bills.  At a time when working capital needs for shipowners are multiplying, and interest rates are increasing, this topic should be close to every shipowner’s heart. Ardmore Shipping has been a user of INTERTANKO’s PPS platform for multiple years and can testify to its value and effectiveness regardless of where we are in the market cycle. Ultimately, the system creates the foundation for a wider industry discussion on excessive delays in cash collection, and it therefore offers an opportunity to change industry behavior. You cannot improve what you don’t measure, and through PPS you can transform your conversation with charterers into a transparent and fact-based discourse.”

Read more about INTERTANKO’s Payment Performance System here: https://www.intertanko.com/benchmarking-databases/benchmarkingdatabasetool/7