How to Win a Retainer Contract with a UHNW Client

A single-agent detail covering a principal's daily movement runs between $36,000 (£26,800) and $75,000 (£55,900) a month in the United States. A two-agent travel team runs up to $150,000 (£112,000). Most operators see those numbers as day-rate work strung together. The family office sees them as a line item it would rather convert into one predictable retained contract, managed by one accountable provider, reviewed once a quarter. The operator who understands that difference wins the retainer. The one who quotes a day rate keeps chasing bookings.

This is the business case most close protection professionals were never taught. It is built from the buy side: how a UHNW family or family office actually runs a vendor selection, what they score each bid against, and what gets a proposal binned before anyone reads the second page. We have pulled procurement frameworks used to evaluate executive protection providers, current pricing across the US, UK, and Gulf markets, and the cost-to-serve logic that lets you price a retainer that is profitable for you and defensible under review.

Inside this piece: the client-side procurement checklist a family office scores you against, the retainer structure that reads as a managed service rather than a booked shift, the six things that disqualify a bid on the first read, and the move from day rates to a retained agreement before the client decides to build the function in-house. It comes with two tools you can use this week, an editable proposal template and a working retainer pricing model.