A private banker used to dealing with a client’s investments or tax plans does not, thankfully, have to spend much time worrying about being kidnapped and held for ransom, but in some parts of the world, that is far from a distant threat.

A private banker used to dealing with a client’s investments or tax plans does not, thankfully, have to spend much time worrying about being kidnapped and held for ransom, but in some parts of the world, that is far from a distant threat.

If the reader puts words such as “banker” and “kidnapped” into a web search engine like Google, they will soon realise that attacks can happen, particularly on wealthy Westerners working in poorer parts of the world.

And some of the world’s biggest banking and financial services groups are taking notice. The specialist area of kidnapping insurance – which is available via firms such as Hiscox, Chubb and Kroll, for example – is one part of the equation. And training firms which teach individuals on how to defend themselves is another element.

One such business that teaches people on how to survive an attack is Target Focus Training, set up more than a decade ago by Tim Larkin, a man with a former military background. He now travels around the world teaching people how to ward off kidnappers, using self defence skills that are designed to disable an enemy quickly and get away from trouble. His business is headquartered in Las Vegas and its main training facility is in San Diego. Mr Larkin has built up the firm so that it now has a total of 44 instructors operating in 15 cities across the globe. Banks are among his main clients: they have included Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. The firm has recently contracted to train staff from two major institutions that can not as yet be disclosed.

And Mr Larkin does not just train staff of large financial corporations. He has also trained the US Navy SEAL Teams, US Army Special Forces, FBI Hostage Teams, the US Department of Treasury and other agencies. And other clients have included Oracle, the computer and IT giant, Deloitte, the accountancy group, and Mobil Oil.

Mr Larkin took some time out from his busy schedule to talk to WealthBriefing about his firm’s work and the issues that are driving demand for services such as Target Focus Training.

A lot of affluent Westerners, who may have built their own money from scratch and think of themselves as ordinary people, do not appreciate how they appear to poor, ruthless people in certain countries, he said.

“They don’t realise that local criminals see them as a prime target. They see them as potential hostages. I deal with guns, knives and multiple attackers…not to turn people into killing machines but to make them realise what they are confronting,” Mr Larkin said.

“In the old `Wild West’ of Moscow, you had people going to stay in a five-star hotel and having their doors kicked in, people getting robbed and so on. In South Africa, there is a kidnapping risk,” he continued.

“I show people how to put attackers down quickly because that is the only way that is going to work when you are up against folk who are faster, quicker and stronger. You cannot compete against such people but you can injure them, such as an arm, or some other part of the body, so the person being attacked can then get away quickly.

“We show them [course trainees] what it takes to survive and how to put injury into a human body. It is not like martial arts or a sport. We teach  people quickly about some of these realities,” Mr Larkin said.

Hard realities

Those “realities” are now regular news. Almost every week, it seems, news stories carry tales of Somali pirates attempting – and sometimes succeeding – in capturing merchant vessels, or South American kidnappers grabbing people they regard as likely or able to pay a large sum. Last week, news services reported on how security staff on a Maersk merchant ship in the Indian Ocean repulsed a pirate attack.

In the still relatively safe countries of Western Europe and North America, personal security for private bankers and their clients might seem a relatively distant concern. But as more and more folk in the wealth management industry ply their trade in developing countries with sometimes less robust law and order systems, the issue of personal security becomes more urgent.

According to Aon, the insurer, 55 per cent of kidnaps are in Latin America. Motives can vary but typically, attacks are carried out for money, but in some parts of the world, religious and political considerations play a role, as in the Middle East. More than 70 per cent of ransom cases are resolved by ransom payments, Aon says. Kidnap statistics for the top ten countries in terms of reported cases that were compiled by Hiscox showed there were 7,773 kidnaps between 1992 and 1999, with 5,181 such incidents in Columbia alone. (Hiscox no longer publishes such data). Some figures – such as from Aon – are far larger; a presentation by the insurer said that there are about 30,000 kidnappings a year across the globe. Interpreting such figures can be difficult; as with many crimes, only a portion of them may ever be reported.

Against such a backdrop, the world’s security business is large. In the UK alone, for example, there are about 350,000 licensed security personnel, according to the Security Industry Authority. Among members of the British Security Industry Association, a trade group, the total turnover of such firms amounted to £4.33 billion, according to latest available figures on the BSIA’s website.

The number of firms operating in this field is large, although as Mr Larkin cautions, any would-be trainees should check them first to make sure any training facility comes with proper credentials.

The business of guarding the wealthy and famous goes much wider than teaching such people to defend themselves: there are a large number of firms that provide bodyguard services, surveillance and risk assessments, for example, such as The Anvil Group, a London-headquartered firm, Platinum Protection Group, a US firm, and Counter Threat Group, an international business. Many of these firms use former police and military personnel.

Mr Larkin said there are some top-notch companies working in the field, but also cautions that clients sometimes make the error of assuming that security must entail having large amounts of expensive equipment or bodyguards.

“A lot of the security world loves to load up their clients with guards, equipment and so on. We find that clients often have little understanding of what a threat is,” he said.

Asking tough questions

He said the training his firm provides gives clients a better and more realistic understanding of their security needs, and such clients end up asking harder questions of their security protection services. “It makes a lot of people [in security] uncomfortable...they are not used to being asked intelligent questions about bodyguards and so on.”

“There are, unfortunately, a lot of charlatans in this industry but I don’t want to deride everybody because there are also some fantastic companies out there,” he said.

Besides his training work, Mr Larkin is also a published writer, co-author of  How To Survive The Most Critical 5 Seconds Of Your Life, and the online newsletter, Secrets For Staying Alive When Rules Don’t Apply.

It will always be Mr Larkin’s hope that the sort of advice and training he dispenses will not be needed by any of his pupils. But it is a grim fact of life that wealth managers, like their clients, sometimes have to work in places where people have few scruples about their seizing them for money. And as the rapid ascent of Mr Larkin’s business demonstrates, banks are increasingly interested in what such training services have to offer.