When people talk about crisis preparedness, most of them think of tinned food, water containers and generators. That is not the subject of this page. Anyone who has built up wealth in six or seven figures faces a different problem in a crisis than supplies for the next fortnight: most of their wealth sits in systems they do not control, and throughout history these systems have repeatedly closed at exactly the moment they were needed most. Banks, registers, payment systems, borders. Crisis preparedness for wealthy people therefore does not mean stockpiling. It means access and room for manoeuvre: the certainty that you can reach your wealth and take decisions, even when a bank, an authority or an entire state has other plans.
This page shows you which events can actually hit your financial wealth, which of them are documented in history, and how to position yourself so that none of these events leaves you unable to act. No forecasts and no drama. The documented cases are striking enough.
What crisis preparedness means for a wealthy person, and what it does not
The decisive question of crisis preparedness is not whether you own enough. It is: what can you still reach tomorrow morning if something happens tonight?
A fortune of two million pounds that consists entirely of a house in your home country, a share portfolio at a domestic broker and two domestic bank accounts looks solid on paper. In a crisis it is one single concentration risk: every one of these assets sits in the same legal system, depends on the same institutions and can be reached by the same state with the same means. The house is on the land register, the portfolio with a domestic firm, the accounts too. If that one legal system comes under stress, your entire wealth comes under stress at the same time.
Crisis preparedness means breaking up this simultaneity. Not out of mistrust of any one country, but for the same reason no business owner concentrates all production at a single site: because redundancy is the only protection that does not depend on a forecast. You do not need to know which crisis is coming. You only need to be positioned so that no single crisis catches everything at once. That holds for smaller fortunes too: the Office for National Statistics puts median household wealth in Great Britain, excluding private pensions, at £181,700 for April 2020 to March 2022, and asset protection for ordinary earners also begins with spreading across more than one legal system.
Few things show how differently people approach this question as clearly as the conversation Friedrich Hennegriff held with a former member of a special forces unit about crisis preparedness for financial wealth. Two perspectives that rarely meet: that of the asset protection strategist who thinks in jurisdictions and structures, and that of a man whose profession taught him to plan for the worst case without talking it into being. The common denominator of both perspectives is exactly the core of this page: preparedness is not a bet on collapse, but the creation of options while every route is still open.
Three classes of event, three different answers
Not every crisis is the same. For your financial wealth there are three classes of event, and they call for different answers. Lump them together and in the end you are properly prepared for none of them.
First: the state reaching for wealth. The state knows where your wealth is, and it can reach it by law: through levies, through charges registered against land, through surrender duties such as the historic gold ban, through making bank depositors share in a bank rescue. Against this class only one thing helps: wealth that lies outside the reach of the measure before the measure is decided. After that it is too late, legally too late and not just in practice.
Second: the financial system failing to function. Here nobody wants to take your wealth, but you still cannot get at it: banks stay closed, withdrawals are capped, transfers abroad need approval, a currency stops working. Against this class, access routes help that do not run through the disrupted system: accounts outside the affected currency area and physical assets outside the banking system.
Third: physical insecurity. The rarest but most serious class: a situation in which you want or need to leave the place where you live. For your financial wealth it raises a single question: can you act from somewhere else? Do you have accounts you can reach from there, documents that prove your ownership, and assets that are not tied to the old place? This is not about romantic notions of escape, but about the same sober logic with which companies write contingency plans for their sites.
What history shows
Nothing on this page rests on a forecast. Every one of the following events is documented, and we have read the sources in the original.
- 1923, Germany: Hyperinflation wipes out practically all money debts and money assets denominated in marks. Anyone who held their wealth in savings and bonds lost it without anyone taking anything away. The failure of the system was enough.
- 1933, USA: Executive Order 6102 obliges private individuals to deliver gold coins, gold bullion and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve by 1 May 1933, on pain of fines of up to 10,000 dollars or up to ten years in prison. A state under the rule of law, a democracy, a stroke of the pen.
- 1939 to 1979, United Kingdom: Exchange controls on sterling apply from the outbreak of war, are put on a permanent footing by the Exchange Control Act 1947 and are only abolished on 24 October 1979. For forty years the free route out of the currency is closed.
- 1948, Germany: The currency reform converts the Reichsmark into the Deutsche Mark. For savings, effectively 6.50 Deutsche Marks remain for every 100 Reichsmarks. Overnight, by law, with no right of objection.
- 2013, Cyprus: In the resolution of Laiki Bank and the recapitalisation of the Bank of Cyprus, uninsured deposits above 100,000 euros are drawn on by decision of the Eurogroup; deposits below that remain protected. At the same time Cyprus imposes capital controls: bank holidays, withdrawal limits, frozen assets. They are only lifted in April 2015.
- 2015, Greece: A legislative act declares the banks closed; the withdrawal limit is 60 euros per day and card. The banks reopen after three weeks; the controls stay in place longer. In the middle of the euro area, in the middle of peacetime.
The pattern across a century and across different systems: in a crisis the state reaches for what it can reach, and the financial system closes exactly when everyone wants out at the same time. The easiest to reach is always the wealth that sits at home, appears in a register and runs through domestic institutions.
What preparedness means in practice
From the three classes of event and the historical cases follows a manageable programme. It consists of four building blocks, and none of them is exotic.
Wealth in more than one jurisdiction. The single most effective step. Wealth that sits in another legal system can only be reached by the levies, registers and enforcement of your country of residence through international official channels, and by its capital controls not at all. Which jurisdictions are suitable and how they differ we have written up in detail for fourteen locations.
At least one access route outside your country of residence. An account outside the EU, in your own name or through a structure, is the difference between wealth on paper and the ability to act in an emergency. The Cypriots and Greeks with an account abroad could carry on in 2013 and 2015; the others queued at the cash machine. How this works legally and transparently we show under non-EU bank accounts. For the digital euro, the Commission's proposal for a regulation and the Council's negotiating mandate of December 2025 already provide for a holding limit per person, whose level the ECB and the Council decide.
Physical assets outside the banking system. Part of your wealth belongs in a form that needs no bank, no electricity and no working payment system: physical gold and silver, stored in a private high-security vault outside the EU. Not in a bank safe deposit box; more on that shortly. We have described the two locations we use for this in detail: the free port storage in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and storage in Singapore.
The ability to act when an institution is closed. The most overlooked building block. Preparedness is only complete when it also works if a bank is wound up, a vault operator ceases trading or you yourself are out of action. In concrete terms: access details and powers of attorney arranged, proof of ownership documented several times and in different places, and for every structure a clear answer to the question who may act in an emergency if you cannot. For the case of inheritance we have worked this question through using precious metals as the example: precious metals in an estate.
What most people do instead, and why it does not hold
The safe deposit box in the same country. The box at your own bank feels safe, but it combines the drawbacks of both worlds: it depends on a bank's opening hours and solvency, and it lies fully within reach of your own legal system. In the documented cases of bank holidays, the safe deposit box was just as unreachable as the account. You will find the full comparison under bank safe deposit box or high-security vault.
Gold at home. Holding it physically at home solves the bank problem and creates two new ones: the security risk for you and your family, and the fact that the metal sits in your country of residence, within reach of any future surrender duty. The history of 1933 shows that exactly this reach is the decisive point. Smaller reserves for the transition are defensible; the core of your wealth belongs elsewhere: where to store precious metals.
Everything at one bank. Even people who invest in a diversified way often concentrate everything at one institution. In the EU, deposit guarantee schemes protect 100,000 euros per customer and bank; in the UK the Financial Services Compensation Scheme has protected £120,000 per person and bank since December 2025. In Cyprus, what lay above the limit became part of the loss. Securities in a custody account belong to you, but access to them still runs through the systems of that one firm, and on a bank holiday they too are frozen for the time being.
A structure with no access arrangement for an emergency. Some people already have a structure abroad, but nobody apart from themselves can operate it. That makes the structure worthless at precisely the moment it was built for. A protective architecture is only complete once it is settled who decides, signs and gives instructions in an emergency, and that this person can actually do so in practice.
The physical side: shelter
The four building blocks above cover financial wealth. Alongside them stands the question that follows from the third class of event and that we are asked more often than any other: what about physical protection at home?
The classification matters, and it is sober in both directions. A shelter protects people in one place for a few days. It makes no wealth reachable. In Cyprus and Greece nobody faced the question of where to spend the night. Physical preparedness is one building block next to the financial ones, not their replacement and not their centre.
The building blocks in context
Crisis preparedness is the bracket around everything we describe in detail on this website. The asset classes show how to hold property, precious metals, securities and crypto correctly. The challenges describe the access scenarios in detail, from capital controls to the EU asset register. And the jurisdictions show where you can move to. This page places all of that under a single question: can you still act in every situation?
What we do
We do not sell emergency equipment and we do not sell forecasts. We build the financial side of crisis preparedness: the architecture of jurisdictions, accounts, storage locations and structures that ensures no single event catches your entire wealth at the same time. It starts with a sober review: what lies where today, which of it can be reached in an emergency, and which gap do you close first? Then we implement it, with proven partners, fully legal and transparent towards the authorities.
If you want to know how crisis-proof your wealth is today, a consultation is the right first step. One hour, your specific case, a clear plan.
Frequently asked questions
What does crisis preparedness involve for a wealthy person?
Four things: wealth in more than one jurisdiction, at least one access route outside your country of residence, part of your wealth in physical form outside the banking system, and an arranged ability to act in case an institution closes or you yourself are out of action. Stockpiling and equipment are another subject, and not ours.
Is money in a bank account safe up to the deposit guarantee?
In the EU, deposit guarantee schemes protect 100,000 euros per customer and bank; in the UK the FSCS has protected £120,000 per person and bank since December 2025. In Cyprus in 2013 the limit held: deposits below it remained untouched, uninsured deposits above it were drawn on for the bank rescue. Anyone holding more than the limit at a single bank carries a real risk of loss above it and should spread across several institutions and legal systems.
What are capital controls, and can they happen in Europe?
Capital controls restrict how much money you may withdraw or transfer abroad. It has happened twice in the euro area: Cyprus in 2013 with bank holidays, withdrawal limits and frozen assets, lifted only in April 2015, and Greece in 2015 with closed banks and a daily limit of 60 euros at the cash machine. Both ran through ordinary legal acts and were approved by the European Commission. The United Kingdom itself kept exchange controls on sterling from 1939 until October 1979.
Does a safe deposit box at home protect me?
Against burglary at home, yes; against the relevant crisis scenarios, no. The box depends on the bank and lies in your own country: on a bank holiday you cannot get at it, and it is fully exposed to a statutory surrender duty or enforcement. For the core of your wealth, a private high-security vault outside the EU is the more robust solution.
How much of my wealth should be outside my home country?
There is no serious blanket figure, because the right share depends on the composition of your wealth, your life plans and your capacity to bear risk. The right order, on the other hand, is fixed: first the first access route outside your country of residence, then the physical reserve outside the banking system, then the further structuring. Where you stand and what comes next we clarify in a conversation.
Is all this legal?
Yes, completely. Accounts abroad, storage abroad and structures abroad are legal as long as you meet your tax and reporting obligations, and that is exactly how we build them: transparent towards the authorities, effective against the scenarios on this page. Protection comes from the legal architecture, not from secrecy.