Why Kidnap And Ransom Insurance Is The Coverage No One Discusses

“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club” –Tyler Durden in “Fight Club”

Kidnap and ransom (K&R) insurance is the corporate insurance that no one talks about—for good reason. Telling potential kidnappers that you have such an insurance policy (often referred to as a “special risk” or “special contingency” policy) is the equivalent of painting a target on your back.

However, the result of this secrecy is that executives and even risk managers can be woefully under-informed about this important part of a company’s well-designed commercial insurance program.

A question I get often is whether K&R insurance is really necessary. After all, most of the high-profile cases of executives being kidnapped for ransom happened decades ago.