Kate Bright pickpocketed her friend on a Tube escalator recently, just to see how long it would take her to notice.
“She couldn’t believe how easy it was for me to do it,” says Bright.
Six-foot, blonde and the founder of Umbra International, Bright is one of the 6.8 per cent of women out of 16,000 close protection operators. Having started out as an executive assistant 25 years ago, she became a chartered security professional working with high-net worth individuals to keep them safe.
Her specialism is working in security for family office, the term used for a private company that invests and manages the wealth of a well-off family. While few of us require an assessment of our home security system, and fewer still a discrete personal security detail at Glastonbury Festival or for a camping trip in the Mongolian steppe, much of what Bright instructs her clients about is relevant to the ordinary person who wants to stay safe.
Bodyguard is an evocative word, one that she feels no longer reflects the role of personal security in 2024. Bright is trying to shift the perception of the sector from physical protection to a more holistic one. The nature of risk has changed. It’s not just physical anymore, but digital, reputational and even emotional.
Random violent attacks, riots and online hate grip the news. And yes, there are warnings about those pickpockets on the Tube.
“We’re living in a post-modern, perma-crisis of geo-political shifts,” says Bright, as we chat in her Mayfair office. “There is organised and randomised crime. One in four people in the world at any given moment is subject to mental problems. Times have never been more dangerous and more uncertain.”
Those she helps include everyone from young Instagram influencers navigating personal and digital security, or business people who’ve raised and sold a Unicorn (a startup that surpasses $1 billion) and are navigating a new world of wealth, through to established family offices who want to ensure the next generation are emotionally fit to inherit; getting one such client into rehab and a better place with their life is one of her proudest achievements.
“If wealth is squandered, that is a bad day at the office,” says Bright, who firmly believes in the power of what great wealth done well can achieve. “That’s philanthropy and it is a positive thing for society.”
We are in the midst of a so-called great wealth transfer; over the next two decades, an estimated $84.4 trillion in assets will be passed down from the silent generation (those born in the mid 1920s to the mid 1940s) and baby boomers to their loved ones. “It’s a big moment in the private wealth and investment sense in the family office sector.”
The things that can make a difference can be surprising; making sure a wealthy teenager has good role models around them (ex-sports people in the family team is a tried and tested Bright technique) so they don’t lose their head when they get to university or suddenly find themselves living in a central London apartment.
“Making friends and dating the wrong people, it’s not just a young person thing. We all are trying to make sure that any association we have is genuine.”
And Bright doesn’t want to empower high-net wealth individuals to live safe and secure lives, but communities and society as a whole.
“That’s my real passion area. Why should we as a business and sector only protect those who can afford it?”
Bright has distilled the four pillars of modern security down to physical, digital, reputational and emotional resilience. Here is what is in her tool kit – and should be in yours too.