Close protection and executive protection

Does our protection team need a medic?

On most mandates yes, and it is worth knowing what that person is actually for. Major trauma is the rarest thing a detail medic deals with. What occurs is a cardiac event, an allergic reaction, a fall, or a principal whose regular medication is in another country. Someone trained only on wound patterns stalls at all four.

The part buyers miss is what has to sit behind the person. A medic without a named medical direction works without the doctor who carries responsibility for their protocols, who makes lawful procurement of prescription drugs possible at all, and who they reach when a decision goes beyond their own scope. Without it they either carry too little to help or carry something they have no basis for, and the consequence falls back on you as well. We put the medical direction in place, tie it to the country or area of operation, and set up the telemedical link.

Close protection or executive protection, what is the difference?

Nothing in substance, only in where the buyer sits. North American clients generally say executive protection, British and South African clients close protection, and the same work is meant by both. Where a genuine difference exists it is in the mandate, meaning whether the task is a permanent detail around one person, a single trip, or a residential and family arrangement. That is what we ask about.

We would like armed protection. Is that possible in Germany?

Rarely, and almost never at short notice. Clients from the United States or the Middle East are used to armed details and assume the position in Germany is comparable. It is not.

A firearms permit under section 28 WaffG is not a company license. The need has to be established for a specific guarding assignment relating to a specific endangered person under section 19 WaffG or a specific endangered object, and the act expressly does not provide for a general permit covering a company. The weapon may be carried only while that particular assignment is actually being performed. For every individual guard the authority must consent before firearms are handed over, and it must refuse consent where the company's liability insurance does not cover the handling of firearms by guards. Getting the authority to accept that the person is endangered is the real hurdle, not the paperwork.

For a visit lasting a few days this is usually not achievable. What happens in the market instead is worth knowing before it is offered to you. The job gets accepted, and the people who turn up hold a permit issued for an entirely different assignment, often staff whose normal work is cash in transit and who have never been trained in close protection. That holds up neither legally nor professionally, and if it goes wrong the consequences are yours.

On top of that, in most cases it is not warranted. The threat picture in Germany rarely calls for it, and a visibly armed escort raises the very profile the protective plan is meant to lower. We say so upfront and plan so that the weapon is not the load-bearing part. Where a mandate genuinely requires it, it runs through a provider holding a permit for that specific assignment, with the lead time that takes.

What does a license tell you about a provider?

Less than most buyers assume, and nothing at all about quality. A license records that somebody cleared a minimum and was found reliable enough to trade. That minimum is a written exam and a background check in one country, a short course ending without an exam in the next, and in several places our clients operate there is no licensing regime to clear. Even the strictest of them is silent on whether the officer who turns up is any good.

So do not buy on the license, buy on what can be checked independently. We look at three things. Whether the provider appears in the national register, where one exists, because that shows somebody examined their reliability. Actual insurance cover, measured against the mandate in hand. And what the people being deployed have most recently rehearsed, which is the only one of the three that says anything about performance.

On larger mandates, and always where the project is financed by a development bank, human rights due diligence comes on top. It asks whether the provider can show on paper that its people were not implicated in past abuses and that rules on the use of force and a grievance mechanism exist. We give you the result in writing.

We only need two officers for a week. Do we have to buy the planning as well?

Sometimes not. If the requirement is genuinely a short, low-threat presence at a known venue, we will say so, connect you with a vetted local provider and stay out of the middle. Planning is charged where planning changes the outcome, and we would rather tell you it does not than sell it anyway.

Why does the team need to be there a day before we arrive?

Because everything that makes a visit work is settled before it starts. The venues in the calendar get walked, the routes get driven at the hour they will actually be driven, the hotel's own security is briefed, the nearest suitable hospital is identified and confirmed to accept, and the drivers are met in person.

That day is the cheapest risk reduction in the whole mandate. Where it gets cut, the team spends the visit reacting to a building it is seeing for the first time.

How do you keep it discreet?

By designing for the principal's normal pattern rather than around it. Vehicles that match the setting, officers who fit the room, arrival routes that do not announce themselves, and no convoy where one car is safer. Discretion comes out of the decisions made before anyone arrives.

Do you work with a client's existing team?

Often. A family office with an established detail usually needs an outside assessment, a better advance process and support for travel outside the home jurisdiction, not a replacement.