Ted Jones of Northcott Global Solutions has earned a reputation for being the man to call when you have a crisis. In a short span of just 12 years, he has transformed the emergency evacuation and assistance services industry with an innovative approach to the operational side. With a team of around fifty people and an extensive network of more than 12,000 service providers spread across the globe, NGS has pulled off more than 10,000 emergency support operations in countries as far apart as Argentina and Japan.
After graduating with a degree in History from SOAS, University of London, and a career as an international athlete, Ted Jones spent several years in the British army carrying out operational tours across the world. He then moved on to roles in the insurance sector, first working as a Kidnap & Ransom insurance underwriter specializing in Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti, and then working as an insurance broker for Lloyd’s in London. His next stint setting up the operational side of a medical evacuation company focusing on super-high threat environments as well as his experience with military operations and in the insurance industry equipped him with the operational and logistic skills he has today.
Ted has extensive commercial and operational experience in Central & South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He set up NGS in 2010 with the goal of solving the structural and systemic problems he identified within the traditional assistance industry, especially in light of its failure to meet the demands of modern crisis situations. In 2017, NGS won the International Assistance Company of the Year award for the first time and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2020, attesting to the effectiveness of the company’s revolutionary approach.
Most emergency companies deploy their own assets in order to respond to a crisis situation and as it is not possible to have assets in every country, this hampers their ability to move quickly when there is a crisis in a country where they do not have a presence. NGSoutsources such services to an extensive network of carefully vetted locally based operators lending the company a level of flexibility and comprehensive coverage that other players in the industry lack.
The actions taken in the first moments of an emergency are critical. Unless specialist resources are deployed rapidly in a coordinated manner, the situation can quickly get out of hand. Many other emergency response companies scrambled to respond when Russia invaded Ukraine. NGS, on the other hand, through mobilization of its local partners, was able to respond within just 4 hours to become the only emergency company that was operating in Ukraine at that time. The firm was able to safely move hundreds of people from multiple extreme-risk locations across Ukraine for several clients within a short span of 48 hours. This included evacuation of the employees and dependents of clients including children and animals. Such a rapid response mitigates the scope for potential costs, loss of lives and any reputational damage to clients.
Another particularly impressive operation was the safe evacuation of almost 4,000 personnel for a wide variety of clients including the likes of the UK government during the Arab Spring. Such operations have cemented NGS’s reputation for its ability to tackle difficult situations in any part of the world in a speedy and effective manner.
Traditional emergency service providers generally focus on providing services to clients in the developed world and struggle to respond effectively in more remote regions. NGS, on the other hand, has been set up from the get go to operate in the most inaccessible and challenging
parts of the world where people cannot depend on local emergency services. With numerous service providers for a wide range of services like translation, medical care, security services, land and air transport and safe housing, the NGS network boasts both width and depth, thus minimizing the risk of any element failing.
Said Ted Jones, CEO of Northcott Global Solutions, “Contrary to popular perception, we are not evacuating people fleeing from a civil war or airlifting supplies to a Covid patient on a superyacht marooned in a remote spot on a daily basis. Many of the situations that we tackle are easily resolved and might involve something as simple as getting a client with a toothache to a dentist in Nigeria. But what differentiates us from other companies in this sphere is the speed of our response and the presence that we have in practically every country through our extensive partner network. In a crisis situation, it is this speed that can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful outcome. And that is why we can boast of a successful track record of never failing to meet a client’s needs in the more than 10,000 operations that we have carried out”
Media Contact
Name: Ted Jones
Email address: tjones@northcottglobalsolutions.com
