With college spring break fast approaching many college students will be traveling with their friends to various locations to celebrate the week off of school. One of the most popular locations to visit has become one of the most dangerous locations to visit for US citizens. It may surprise you to learn that the most dangerous location to travel to is Mexico. Everyone knows not to drink the water in Mexico, but that is not the biggest threat in Mexico these days. The biggest threat is not highly publicized probably to protect the tourism business in Mexico, but in 2009 Mexico passed Colombia as the #1 country for Kidnappings in the world.

**Kidnappings can be either weeks or months long or “express kidnappings.” Express kidnappings have become very frequent in Mexico. The type of event is many times carried out by taxi drivers who will pick up wealthy or foreign looking individuals, drive them to an ATM, demand that the passengers withdraw funds then travel to another ATM and do the same thing prior to releasing the passengers (hopefully unharmed). **

Before sending your children off on a weeklong trip to Mexico you should think about security risks and look into a Kidnap & Ransom policy.

Petersen International provides a Kidnap & Ransom policy for both personal/family or business/corporate uses. The Kidnap & Ransom policy provides for a number of key benefits. Two main benefits are:

1. Ransom indemnification. If an insured person is kidnapped and a ransom is paid the policy will reimburse the policy owner up to the policy limits.

2. Unlimited fees for a crisis response team. If an insured person is kidnapped the first thing you would do is call the crisis response team which has specialists around the world that specialize in certain regions of the world. For example if you were in certain Latin or South America and a kidnapping occurred you most likely would not want to contact the local authorities because many times they are involved in the kidnapping. That is why you need the expertise of the crisis response team.

Petersen International Underwriters is long experienced in this specialized field. We have two highly respected underwriters to deal in this arena. The coverage is not expensive and is well worth the consideration of clients.