Protecting Employees and Corporate Assets is Serious Business

As a company expands globally, so do exposures. Companies with overseas operations and executives or staff who travel internationally may be targets for kidnappers and extortionists.

Operating managers in any corporation face the daunting challenge of protecting valued employees and corporate assets. In most organisations, few people fully understand exposures such as kidnapping and extortion. But extortion, crime, and political instability are facts of life that corporate leaders must deal with when transacting business in an increasingly global and, unfortunately, hostile environment.

Economic Globalisation Equals Unprecedented Kidnapping & Extortion Risks

Although unprecedented global integration has created tremendous business opportunities for corporations, it is tempered by unprecedented increases in crime, including kidnapping and extortion. According to experts, two new kidnappings occur somewhere in the world every hour. Likewise, multinational corporations report, far too frequently, threats against employees from political terrorists and other groups. Corporate security directors are revisiting as never before the level of physical security they provide.

Like kidnapping and political threats, extortion risks are all too real:

• Threat by a criminal to harm employees unless an extortion payment is received;
• Threat by a terrorist to poison a food or drug product unless extortion payments are made;
• Threat by a hacker to destroy electronic data unless a sizeable sum of money is paid.

As an industry leader in kidnap ransom and extortion insurance, Stening Simpson believes the best risk management strategy for these risks includes quality insurance coverage, sound risk management procedures, protocols and expert advice.

Stening Simpson Protection

Stening Simpson offers customers access to crisis management expertise which specialises in dealing with kidnapping and extortion threats and also offers essential information services for global business travellers. Customers gain access to Stening Simpson travel security alerts and terrorism and political stability concerns around the globe. Stening Simpson encourages insured’s to use this valuable risk management tool when making travel plans or business decisions.

Kidnap/Ransom and Extortion Insurance Features:

Kidnap/ransom coverage
Reimburse clients for property or other consideration surrendered as a kidnapping ransom payment. In addition, a ransom demand can trigger the expense coverage section of a policy to assist in dealing with the kidnapping.

Extortion coverage
Reimburses clients if they make an extortion payment to mitigate or remove a threat. The policy is triggered by an extortion threat to:

• Damage or destroy any premises or tangible property located on the customer’s premises;
• Contaminate raw materials or products of the customer;
• Abduct, detain, or harm a customer’s employees or their relatives;
• Disseminate, divulge, or utilise any proprietary information of the customer.

Cyber extortion coverage
Reimburses clients for an extortion payment made for cyber threats that threaten to:

• Disseminate, divulge, or utilise a client record held by the customer;
• Alter, damage, destroy, or render unusable data owned by the customer.

Political threat coverage
Provides insurance for politically motivated threats to harm a customer’s employees or their relatives by a person or group:

• Acting as an agent of, or with approval from, any government or government entity;
• Acting, or purporting to act, on behalf of any political terrorist or insurgent party.

Ransom delivery coverage
The policy insures the money or other consideration used to pay a ransom or extortion demand while it is being delivered.

Expenses coverage
The policy indemnifies the client for additional reasonable expenses incurred in connection with a kidnapping, an extortion threat, a hijacking, a political threat, or wrongful detention including:

• Fees of an independent negotiator;
• Fees of an independent public relations firm;
• Interest incurred for a loan taken for a ransom or an extortion payment;
• Reward payment to an informant;
• Salary of the abducted employee;
• Salary of temporary replacement worker;
• Consequential personal financial loss;
• Reasonable medical, cosmetic, psychiatric, and dental expenses incurred following the release of the abducted employee;
• Reasonable rest and rehabilitation costs following release;
• Independent security guard services.

Accidental death and dismemberment
The policy includes a life benefit in the event that an insured employee or relative dies during a kidnapping, hijacking, or wrongful detention or a payment in the event of mutilation or loss of sight, hearing, or use of limb.

Product recall expenses
Provides insurance for the reasonable expenses involved in transporting merchandise that must be withdrawn from the market, physically inspected, or destroyed due to an extortion threat to contaminate such merchandise.