If you and your family do a lot of international traveling, or are expatriates living and working in a foreign country you may be considering an international kidnap insurance policy. If you are considering a kidnap and ransom insurance policy, here are the most important things you should be looking at when considering a policy:
- First, the coverage should be global in nature. You may not know where you (or your daughter) may be traveling next month. You don’t want a policy that only lists select countries for coverage. The best policies are open ended.
- Second, the insurance policy should not have a long list of countries that are not covered. Of course, most policies will exclude the OFAC sanctioned countries for legal reasons like Iran and North Korea. Other policies will exclude obvious war zones like Afghanistan. If the list of excluded countries in the kidnap insurance policy is longer than the obvious countries, it should be avoided.
- Third, the international kidnap insurance coverage should be blanket in nature and open ended. If you buy kidnap insurance for specific trip dates and specific countries and an incident happens in another place or date, there will be no coverage under these limited policies. A good blanket coverage is good for the entire year, covers the entire family, and is essentially global in nature with few country exclusions.
- Fourth, the kidnap for ransom benefit should be adequate but unless you are a very high net worth individual it need not be too large. Most kidnappers, especially in the third world are not asking for $1,000,000 for safe return. Even if they are, the final amount negotiated for safe return will probably be closer to $200,000 and it can be much lower than people expect. A $15,000 safe return is not out of the question in some countries. The reason one buys an international kidnap insurance policy is NOT for the benefit. The main benefit is below:
- Finally, if you are in the market for international kidnap insurance you absolutely need to make sure of two things. First, that you do not need to "front" (or put up) the ransom money to the kidnappers yourself only to seek reimbursement later from the insurance company. This can take months. Do you have $150,000 USD liquid you can get in 24 or 48 hours? Even if you can, look at the second "essential" below.
You need to make sure the international kidnap insurance policy covers unlimited consulting fees from a high quality kidnap for ransom consultant. A consultant "on the ground" to negotiate with kidnappers can easily be $3,000 a day. Cases can go on for months in some unfortunate incidences.
If the consulting costs are not covered, you could receive a $150,000 bill on the back end ON TOP of all your other expenses related to the international kidnapping. Who is the consultant and what is their experience? Are you trusting your life and the life of your family to a trusted expert?