| October 14, 2009 |
Insite Security Hosts Webinar on Collections Security |
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By admin |
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Former Special Agent of the U.S. Secret Service Offers Guidance On Protecting Valuable Assets and Investments
What: There is a massive, global-illicit liquid market for any collectible: artwork, jewelry, cars, stamps and coins to name a few. Just a few weeks ago a multi-million dollar original Andy Warhol collection was stolen from the Los Angeles private residence of a businessman. An LAPD detective called the incident ‘a very clean crime,’ meaning the home wasn’t ransacked. What could have been done to prevent this? What do collectors need to know about securing their art to allow for use without compromising security?
Insite Security’s founder and President, Christopher Falkenberg, a former U.S. Secret Service agent, is hosting a webinar to provide corporations and high net worth families and individuals with recommendations on how to assess their collections’ vulnerabilities.
When: Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 10 a.m. (EST)
Who: Christopher Falkenberg, Founder and President, Insite Security
Registration ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS ENCOURAGED SPACE IS
Details: LIMITED
Webcast registration: To register for “Collections Security: Protecting Unique and Valuable Objects,” please visit www.insitesecurity.com.
Telephone registration:
Contact: Anne Donohoe / Lewis Goldberg
212.896.1261 / 212.896.1216
adonohoe@kcsa.com / lgoldberg@kcsa.com
Details: The Collections Security Webinar is the second in a planned series of security-focused educational events hosted by Insite Security. Founded by former Secret Service agent and litigator Christopher Falkenberg, Insite Security is a full-service security and risk management agency for corporations and high net worth individuals.
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| October 29, 2009 |
Running Scared |
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By admin |
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Running Scared
WEALTH & PERSONAL FINANCE
October 28, 2009
By PAUL SULLIVAN
A YEAR after the bursting of the housing, credit and commodities bubbles, Erik Davidson of Wells Fargo Private Bank is worried. He said he thought a new bubble had emerged, this time in something seemingly benign: cash.
“We see, and benefit, from this tsunami of deposits,” said Mr. Davidson, the bank’s managing director for investments for the western United States. “It’s great for the bank, but at a certain point you see this fixated look in people’s eyes and realize this is a cash bubble.”
The idea of a cash bubble may sound ludicrous. Why wouldn’t putting your money into something as secure as certificates of deposit or Treasury bills be a good thing? In the short term, yes, it is. But people who stick with cash will find themselves unable to regain what they lost, Mr. Davidson said.
“If your portfolio was down 33 percent, you need a 50 percent increase to get back to even,” he said. If all your investments were in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which went down 57 percent, “you need a 132 percent return to get out of the hole,” he said. Returns on cash typically yield 2 percent or less.
Investors are so wary of another bust that they are taking extraordinary steps to try to prevent getting caught in one. A cash bubble, and the emerging gold bubble, Mr. Davidson said, are really fear bubbles. The areas in which these fear bubbles are rising show just how scared investors remain:
TRUST
For many investors, faith in a diversified portfolio burst with the bubble.
Nancy Rooney, head of Northeast investment business for the J.P. Morgan private wealth management unit, said she spent the early part of the year coaxing clients into the most secure bonds. Now she is trying to convince them that the six-month run-up in the stock market is not another bubble waiting to burst.
“They’re so panicked because they lost some money, and now they wonder how can they possibly get in,” she said. “You have to gradually put some risk back in portfolios.”
To allay their concerns, she advocates choosing managers who will find the better-quality investments within a sector. But she is also talking to clients about using structured notes, a fairly simple derivative, to mitigate the risk of another bust. In return for forgoing part of the potential gain, a limit is set on how far a stock can fall.
“If I’m concerned about the markets, if my strategic view is we could see some rocky road ahead, there is no exchange-traded fund, no manager who plays to that view, so I have to craft something myself,” Ms. Rooney said. “People equate derivatives with risk, but the reason we’re creating these structured notes is to take risk off the table.”
INSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE
Fear of being wiped out by another bust does have its benefits: some previously blase people are reconsidering such seemingly safe havens as company-sponsored deferred compensation plans. For years, executives piled money into these plans, figuring they would withdraw it when they retired and were in a lower tax bracket. The only risk was if the company went bankrupt, which would leave the employee as an unsecured creditor.
“You can’t say what are the odds of that happening now, because everything happened last year,” said Joseph Spada, managing director at Summit Financial Resources, an investment adviser in Parsippany, N.J. “Now I’d rather take the compensation and pay the tax now.”
Since laws limit when the money can be withdrawn, many people have little recourse but to stop adding to existing plans.
Annuities were another boom-time product, a popular way for investors to sock away money, comfortable that it would be paid back to them in a steady income stream in retirement. Now there are concerns that insurance companies sold too many, and if an insurer collapsed, its annuity holders would lose much of the money.
This was driven home this fall, when the share price of the Hartford, a huge underwriter of annuities, fell to nearly $4 from more than $60. People who had their annuities with the Hartford began worrying about whether it would collapse.
Most state insurance funds cover insurance losses to around $500,000. People with annuities greater than that would have faced a loss, Mr. Spada said, so now they are spreading their annuity risk around to several insurers.
DECEPTION
Many major frauds of the last year would not have been uncovered so soon if the credit bubble had not burst and forced investors to sell assets. That was the undoing of Bernard L. Madoff, Marc S. Dreier and a host of smaller Ponzi schemers.
Many large investors are now taking more aggressive steps to safeguard their money. Enter Elizabeth Prial, a managing director at Insite Security. She can tell if you’re trying to hide something.
A psychologist and former special agent for the F.B.I., she is trained to detect a range of voluntary and involuntary signs that a person is being deceptive by assessing facial action, involuntary microexpressions, body language and more.
“Traditional due diligence is focused on what the client is being told,” said Ms. Prial, who does similar work for the Department of Defense. “I’m going to be watching the nonverbal cues.”
Having such a highly trained specialist sitting in on an investment meeting may seem extreme, and it certainly is not cheap: her services cost $10,000 a day.
“Investors are more fearful,” said Christopher Falkenberg, a former Secret Service agent and the president of Insite. “They’re willing to invest in more proactive measures to reduce the risk than they were before.”
While the vast majority of people lost money the old-fashioned way - their portfolios lost value – the disclosure of serious fraud scared everyone.
Kevin Dorwin, a principal at Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough, a wealth management firm in San Francisco, said several potential investors had asked if they could bring in their own auditors. It was a first for this request, but the firm agreed.
“Personally, I can’t blame them,” Mr. Dorwin said. But if every new client made the request, he said, the time spent on audits would mean “there would be no one to manage the money.”
CREDITORS
A select group of people are doing their best to save what they have left from creditors.
One result is an increased interest in Delaware asset protection trusts, which allow people to shield money from creditors after the assets have been in the trust for four years.
When these trusts were created in 1997, doctors, lawyers and accountants were drawn to them because they feared their liability insurance would not cover them fully. Today, people starting hedge funds and private equity firms are interested, said Dan Lindley, president of the Northern Trust Company of Delaware. “They say, ‘I want to put some of my assets into this trust and have that be my rainy day fund if the fund performs badly and investors turn on me,’” he said.
This may be hiding money from creditors, but Delaware law permits it so long as the person was unaware of any claims against him when he set up the trust.
Interest is also rising in what Boxwood Strategic Advisors calls its “troubled borrower’s program,” an outgrowth of the firm’s business of advising clients with wealth tied up in a single asset.
When loans were easy to get at low interest rates, many wealthy people borrowed against such assets – restricted stock, for example – to invest in other assets. When the bubble burst, the collateral went down in value and banks either demanded more or started selling the collateral. Investors found themselves in a bind.
Boxwood’s role is to negotiate a solution. “Both sides contributed to this,” said Alec Haverstick II, managing director at Boxwood. “Should you really have leveraged your liquid assets at 75 percent and invested in illiquid assets? It might have been better at 35 or 40 percent. But the banks allowed this.”
Mr. Haverstick says he tries to get the two sides working together. “Isn’t this person better off and aren’t you better off with this person as a continuing pool of economic activity than as a dead body?” he asked.
BUBBLEHEADS
Of course, there will be always be investors who try to time the market. The desire to make back their money trumps their fear of losing more.
Lewis Altfest, president of Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York, said he had been inundated with clients wanting to buy “disaster stocks” in the belief that they have to go up. He put CIT, A.I.G. and Citibank in this category and said people thought these stocks were unreasonably low and had to rise.
He has told clients that CIT, the troubled small-business lender, might not come back until after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization that would wipe out shareholders. But some clients are undeterred, pointing to Citicorp in the 1990s, when its stock fell to $6 from $50 before rebounding.
“There is some validity to their argument, but I wouldn’t bank my money on it,” he said. “It’s a Las Vegas mentality.”
A corollary to this view is people who own disaster stocks and refuse to sell them. Mr. Dorwin said he had a new client with the bulk of his wealth in a handful of stocks that had all gone down. “He wanted to wait until the stocks went back up in value before diversifying,” he said. “It’s like going uninsured until health care reform passes.”
It took Mr. Dorwin months to persuade the client to sell the losers and reinvest the money more broadly. “People get very attached to their individual stocks,” he said. They also get ideas to invest in things that seem great but that they do not fully understand.
One example of this is currencies, particularly exotic ones. With the dollar’s decline, “people are coming up to me at parties and saying, ‘I don’t do stocks anymore; I’m into currencies,’” Mr. Davidson said. “Speculating in currencies is riskier than stocks.”
So, too, is betting everything on emerging Asia. The argument to do so, Mr. Altfest said, goes like this: “China and India are going to take over the world, so why don’t I put all of my money in the fastest-growing area?” In October 2008, when the view of the region was less sanguine, Mr. Altfest put client money in two Asia funds. One is up nearly 80 percent; the other doubled. Recently he has been invited to the introductions of new Asia funds, he said, and “that’s the sign of overheating. We’ve cut back our original allocations.”
In other words, sometimes a little fear of a rapidly inflating asset is a good thing. You may not get all of the upside, but you might be able to avoid having the bubble burst in your face.
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| October 30, 2009 |
Chris Falkenberg and Dr. Elizabeth Prial in the NYT |
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By Amram Migdal |
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Chris and Dr. Prial are mentioned in the ‘Deception’ section of this fantastic New York Times piece by Paul Sullivan on the insecurity investors have been feeling. Sullivan describes uneasy investors who are re-thinking traditional due diligence in the wake of ponzi schemes like Bernie Madoff, Bayou and others. Chris has pointed out that traditional investment due diligence usually examines a subject’s track record, but it can’t tell you if they’re being deceptive in the here and now. In the article, Dr. Prial describes how she looks at involuntary, non-verbal signs to detect deception and alert investors to someone who is acting edgy or hiding something. Check out the article.
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| October 30, 2009 |
Touching Base with High Net Worth Families and Advisors |
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By Christopher Falkenberg |
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Last week I attended the Family Office Exchange’s Fall Forum in Chicago for a chance to spend time with high net worth families and their advisors, a number of whom attended my special session on family security. FOX is a leading group in the HNW space, and it’s always valuable to hear input and feedback from their members.
This year, the top concern I heard from a number of participants, particularly families in metropolitan areas, is the lack of confidence in plans to prepare for emergencies and disasters. Despite government efforts over the past 8 years, families are still unsure of how best to prepare for or how to respond to a wide range of crucial scenarios, spanning weather emergencies to a potential terrorist attack.
The second issue on the minds of families and advisors is a concern over the role of staff when responding to emergencies. Household staff are eager to help and protect their employers and their children in adverse circumstances, but their good intensions may be misplaced or go awry. For example, staff may engage an unfamiliar trespasser directly without any protocol for making sure this person is not a threat or a plan for how to respond by securing the family and getting help if it turns out they are. Training staff is a key area when it comes to keeping families safe, and I’m glad family members and advisors are recognizing the issue and looking for solutions.
I discussed many more meaningful security issues and challenges with the FOX members and attendees. This year’s forum was engaging and educational, as always, and I’m looking forward to implementing some of what I learned.
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| November 4, 2009 |
Countering Threats |
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By admin |
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Countering Threats: Insite Security shields its clients against kidnappers and other criminals who prey on the wealthy.
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT – PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2009
By CAREN CHESLER
It remains one of the most horrific kidnappings in history. In April 1992, Exxon executive Sidney Reso was kidnapped in his own driveway in wealthy Morris Township, N.J. Bound and gagged, he was put in a six-by-three-and-a-half foot wooden box, which was left in a metal storage room without ventilation or electricity. The 57-year-old father of five was left there for four days, lying in his own waste and given little more than water and vitamins. On the fifth day, his kidnappers returned to find him dead. Yet they continued to demand $18.5 million in ransom for eight weeks before finally being apprehended.
Reso wasn’t the first wealthy executive to be abducted and he certainly won’t be the last, which is why some of the country’s wealthiest families have hired New York City-based Insite Security Inc.
The firm’s CEO, Chris Falkenberg, a former Secret Service agent and litigator, counts celebrities, such as Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren, as well as movie stars and hedge fund managers among his clients. The firm has so many clients in hedge-fund heavy Connecticut, it opened a four-person office in Greenwich. Falkenberg founded the firm in 2002.
“I think the most important thing we do is prevent kidnappings and respond to them,” Falkenberg says. “It is the number one threat because it is exactly the type of crime focused against our client base. Our clients have an enormous amount of money and, therefore, they are attractive to kidnappers.”
His firm, which employs law enforcement veterans who formerly worked for the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as several police departments, has about a dozen clients for which it provides security services on a retainer basis.Monthly fees range from $8,000 to $12,000. The firm also performs discreet services, such as installing home security systems, which could cost $40,000 to $60,000.
The range of services Insite provides varies, depending on the client’s level of risk. An executive with a company that does animal testing or sells fur, for instance, faces a higher risk, as do executives who have received a lot of publicity because of their wealth or been involved in a high-profile termination of an employee, according to Falkenberg.
Kidnapping, however, is a threat to anyone with a lot of wealth. Kidnappings are on the rise internationally, experts say, partly due to organized crime activity in countries such as Brazil and Russia, and the drug trade run out of countries such as Mexico, where kidnapping has become a lucrative criminal activity. That’s made border states like Arizona, Texas and California greater security risks, says Falkenberg.
Apparently, Connecticut has its risks as well. In 2003, billionaire hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was kidnapped at gunpoint while leaving work. Several ex-convicts found Lampert, who at the time owned the $9 billion private investment fund ESL Investments Inc., by going into the prison law library in jail and typing in “richest guy in Connecticut,” Falkenberg says. They nabbed him at work after seeing that he went in every Saturday and parked in the same spot that had his name on it. He was held for ransom for two days before talking his way out of it.
Falkenberg feels one of the benefits his firm brings to clients is the ability to respond to such situations on a moment’s notice. Law enforcement agencies, in contrast, may not act with urgency until they’ve established whether a kidnapping has occurred, he says.
To help prepare for kidnapping situations, Falkenberg recently hired the FBI’s former lead hostage negotiator, Christopher Voss. Experts say the first 24 hours of a kidnapping are considered the most crucial, in terms of keeping the victim alive, Falkenberg notes. The presence of Voss will assist the firm when it needs to act quickly, he adds.
“Given that so many of our clients are U.S.-based, and so many [domestic] kidnappings result in homicides, we just can’t not have that capability in house,” Falkenberg says.
Voss says kidnappings are like Russian roulette. Most of the time, victims are unharmed. But when something does go wrong, the results can be disastrous. In the U.S., he feels victims face heightened risk because kidnappers are more concerned about covering up their tracks.
“In the U.S., we have an extremely robust law enforcement community, and kidnappers are afraid they’re going to get caught. And they’re not only going to get caught they’re going to do an extremely long time in jail,” Voss says. “Outside the U.S., they’re pretty sure they won’t get caught.”
The firm hasn’t yet had to deal with a kidnapping, but Falkenberg believes it may have prevented one. He had a client in New York whose child may have been a potential target. According to school officials, a man was asking questions about the client’s child. But once Falkenberg’s firm put the man under surveillance, he disappeared.
“There can always be an innocuous excuse for behavior, but we didn’t think that was the case here. So we increased security, and the surveillance ended,” Falkenberg says. “One of the frustrating things about selling these services is that, unlike an investment advisor, we can’t prove a negative.”
Aside from kidnapping, the biggest issues clients face are home invasions and confidence games perpetrated by the people around them, Falkenberg says. For example, the firm had two ultra-wealthy clients whose college-aged sons were preyed upon by women who wanted their money. The parents had grown suspicious of the women, but their sons, who were so flattered by the women’s interest, refused to end the relationships.
Falkenberg’s firm discovered that both women had created a web of lies, about their identities, their college majors, and various other basic facts. The men ultimately terminated the relationships.
The women likely found the men in one of the college yearbooks created for entering freshmen, Falkenberg says. In general, he says, the less information that’s available about his clients, the safer they are.
“These days, there’s so much information out there about people, specifically the wealthy, that it creates security issues for them,” Falkenberg says. “Even if they make huge efforts not to draw attention to themselves, like those who vociferously guard their privacy and don’t talk to the media or take credit for their charitable foundations, they still end up in media reports on the very, very wealthy, like the Forbes list.” Some of the biggest breaches in security occur when people voluntarily give up information, he notes.
Falkenberg, who served on the security detail for the first President George Bush and then for President Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign, recommends that the wealthy keep public information about themselves vague, business-oriented and impersonal. The wealthy should be guarded about where they live, whom they know and what they do for hobbies, he says. The firm also does thorough background checks on anyone working for his clients, from nannies to landscapers.
Many of his clients, particularly hedge fund managers who have acquired enormous amounts of wealth early in life, find they and their children are living in a bubble. One of the firm’s challenges is allowing clients to live somewhat normal lives while looking out for their security.
“They’ll have a security infrastructure, but they don’t want to see or have to worry about it,” Falkenberg says. “It’s not so easy to do that.”
What makes it even harder is when clients are resistant to his security efforts. He once had an interior designer balk at the prospect of putting smoke detectors on the ceilings of each room, suggesting instead that they be put in closets. The wife of one of his clients asked that the unsightly surveillance cameras in the backyard be tucked away so far into the bushes that it rendered them useless.
The most resistant family members, he says, are children, who are warned not to put intimate details on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Many simply refuse to comply.
Risks don’t just occur at home, he notes. The ultra-wealthy have to be careful, perhaps even more careful, when they travel.
“When you show up and get off a Global Explorer – a $15 million private jet – people look at you differently,” he says. What predators see, he says, is opportunity.
Falkenberg had a client whose five-member family was traveling through one of the former Soviet republics 18 months ago and was detained at an airport by border officials who were apparently looking for a payoff. After six hours of detention, Falkenberg says the family was freed after his firm “negotiated” with the officials.
“We used contacts we developed in advance of the trip,” Falkenberg says, adding, “And maybe there was some payment of compensation to someone. And maybe not.”
Falkenberg says he’s seen an increase in requests for security services related to overseas tourism and business travel. It’s not surprising. Security experts say Americans traveling internationally face increased risks today to not just their safety but also their health. For that reason, Falkenberg’s firm recently partnered with a company called WorldClinic to provide emergency medical care to its clients. With a network of 4,000 doctors outside the U.S., WorldClinic provides around-the-clock medical care to clients who suffer serious illness or injury while traveling abroad.
Falkenberg believes people should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Anne G. Donohoe, who works for Falkenberg’s public relations firm, KCSA Strategic Communications, can vouch for that. She was recently preparing for a trip to the Tuscany region of Italy when she received a call from Falkenberg, who told her to become acquainted with the plane’s exit routes and to wear sneakers on the flight, in case she has to run. He told her not to take the sneakers off until the plane is at cruising altitude, and because she was staying in a 200-year-old villa, he warned her to locate all of the exits in the building in case there was a fire.
“I told him, ‘You’re scaring me.’ And he said, ‘Great. Have a nice trip,’” Donohoe says. “Now when I travel, I keep a flashlight on me, in case there’s a power outage.”
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| December 4, 2009 |
Safe at Home? |
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By admin |
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Safe at home? Not exactly, according to Insite Security president Christopher Falkenberg (ex-U.S. Secret Service agent, Columbia Law School grad). “All a home safe does is buy time,” he says. “Still, they are necessary deterrents. The thing with jewelry is, if it’s just out there on the dresser, it is the easiest thing to pick up and take.” Falkenberg and his team—which includes the former head of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit and a Joint Terrorism Task Force agent—work with high-wealth clients and an architect to install home safes that are first meant to prevent burglary. “I can’t tell you how many people have their valuables in fireproof vaults,” Falkenberg says, “which are good at withstanding heat damage, but they’re pretty easy to open.” He insists clients have safes built into their closets, at eye or waist level: “You wouldn’t believe how many people leave their jewelry out after a party because the safe is on the floor.” And the inside should be organized like the very best California Closet and integrated with the home alarm system. “The systems we recommend,” says Falkenberg, “are so advanced, they send you an e-mail once the safe is opened.” Services range from $75,000 to $100,000 per year (212-362-5700; insitesecurity.com).
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| December 9, 2009 |
Chartis Announces Expanded Personal Security Services from Private Client Group |
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By admin |
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New Resources Enhance Protection for Individuals with Complex Risks
NEW YORK–Chartis today announced the expansion of personal security services from its Private Client Group. Two complimentary resources, emergency preparedness services and access to Insite Security, have been introduced to supplement Private Client Group’s comprehensive property and liability insurance offerings for high net worth individuals and families.
The new offerings, which are in addition to an already extensive suite of risk management services designed to reduce the likelihood and severity of property damage, as well as maximize safety, are designed for policyholders with complex exposures resulting from worldwide travel; private home staff; multiple residences; yacht ownership; or extensive collections of art, jewelry or cars.
Emergency preparedness services help reduce threats to family safety, security and personal wealth through activities such as evacuation and communication planning, home security assessments, personal liability assessments, and crisis management. Consultations, either by phone or in person, are conducted by Private Client Group’s team of emergency preparedness specialists who have backgrounds in personal and corporate security and substantial experience advising individuals, families and companies. The consultations can cover:
- Lifestyle risks, such as how often one travels, who has access to the home and the safety of children away at school;
- Strategies to handle an incidental house fire or community-wide emergency; and
- Personalized emergency action plan development.
When needed, policyholders may be referred to a network of third-party vendors to assist with plan implementation. A 24-hour emergency preparedness and response hotline is also provided.
Private Client Group also has partnered with Insite Security, an industry leader in personal security for high net worth individuals that employs law enforcement veterans. Eligible policyholders can receive a one-on-one, at-home consultation (followed by an individualized report outlining potential vulnerabilities and customized solutions); proposals for long-term security; and ongoing security training for staff and family.
“We strive to help our policyholders protect what’s precious to them, and that often means looking beyond material possessions,” said Charles Williamson, President of Private Client Group. “By analyzing their lifestyles and preparing for even the rarest of scenarios, we can maximize safety as well as preserve assets.”
For more information on Private Client Group’s personal security services, please contact Todd Triano at (908) 679-3066 or todd.triano@chartisinsurance.com or Christopher Falkenberg at (212) 362-5700 or cfalkenberg@insitesecurity.com
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| December 14, 2009 |
Chartis Introduces Personal Security Services For Policy Holders |
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By admin |
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Chartis Introduces Personal Security Services For Policy Holders
Insurance Business Review
December 8, 2009
Chartis has introduced personal security services from its Private Client Group. Two complimentary resources, emergency preparedness services and access to Insite Security, have been introduced to supplement its group’s property and liability insurance offerings for high net worth individuals and families.
The company said that the offerings are for policyholders with complex exposures resulting from worldwide travel; private home staff; multiple residences; yacht ownership; or extensive collections of art, jewelry or cars. Emergency preparedness services reduce threats to family safety, security and personal wealth through activities such as evacuation and communication planning, home security assessments, personal liability assessments, and crisis management.
According to Chartis, the policyholders may be referred to a network of third-party vendors to assist with plan implementation. Eligible policyholders can receive a one-on-one, at-home consultation followed by an individualized report outlining potential vulnerabilities and customized solutions; proposals for long-term security; and ongoing security training for staff and family.
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| December 14, 2009 |
Kobe Bryant Confronted with Neighbor’s Home Invasion |
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By Amram Migdal |
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The LA Times reported last week that star basketball player Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers did not attend a team shoot-around because of a home-invasion robbery at the house of a neighbor in his community. Apparently, a SWAT response resulted in the arrest of three people after a standoff at the home of one of Bryant’s Newport Beach, CA neighbors, while two suspects were still at large. Four of the suspects were apparently armed with handguns.
In this case, Bryant himself was not the target of the home invasion, although high-profile individuals are often tempting for criminals because so much information about their intended victims is available in the public domain. The home invasion took place inside a private gated community, which should prompt Bryant and the other residents to consider whether they should strengthen the security posture of their community.
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| December 14, 2009 |
Chartis Expands Personal Security Services for High Net Worth Clients |
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By admin |
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Chartis Expands Personal Security Services for High Net Worth Clients
Insurance Journal
December 8, 2009
Chartis is offering expanded personal security services from its Private Client Group. The insurer has introduced two complimentary resources, emergency preparedness services and access to Insite Security, to supplement Private Client Group’s property and liability insurance offerings for high net worth individuals and families.
The new offerings, which are in addition to existing risk management services designed to reduce the likelihood and severity of property damage, as well as maximize safety, are designed for policyholders with complex exposures resulting from worldwide travel; private home staff; multiple residences; yacht ownership; or extensive collections of art, jewelry or cars.
Emergency preparedness services help reduce threats to family safety, security and personal wealth through activities such as evacuation and communication planning, home security assessments, personal liability assessments, and crisis management. Consultations, either by phone or in person, are conducted by Private Client Group’s specialists who have backgrounds in personal and corporate security. The consultations can cover lifestyle risks, such as how often one travels, who has access to the home and the safety of children away at school; strategies to handle an incidental house fire or community-wide emergency; and personalized emergency action plan development.
Policyholders may be referred to a network of third-party vendors to assist with plan implementation. A 24-hour emergency preparedness and response hotline is also provided.
Private Client Group also has partnered with Insite Security so that policyholders can receive a one-on-one, at-home consultation (followed by a report outlining potential vulnerabilities and customized solutions); proposals for long-term security; and ongoing security training for staff and family.
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