Guide to Insurance for expatriate employees

Increasingly companies have to send employees abroad to international offices to fill key positions.  Making sure that they have the right international insurance plans to protect them against the risks of illness or injury will help to attract and retain high-calibre employees, provide your employees and their families with financial protection and will protect your business against the loss of key staff. 

There are a number of insurance plans that you should consider: international health insurance plans to cover the cost of medical expenses and evacuation costs wherever your employees live or work, international life insurance to offer your employees the reassurance that their families will be financially protected with an immediate lump sum should they die through illness or accident while in your employment, and international income protection insurance to provide employees with an income when they are absent from work for a long period of time due to illness or accident. 

It is important to realise that insurance policies for employees working abroad differ from similar sounding plans designed for employees working in offices in your home country.  For example a health insurance policy designed for your local market is unlikely to provide any cover when your employees are working abroad for a long period.  Make sure that you buy your insurances from a provider that specialises in international and expatriate cover. 

Health care costs, even in developing countries are high and are escalating quickly so make sure that the cover you buy is sufficient for the countries where your staff will be working.  An annual limit of US$200,000 per employee should be considered as an absolute minimum and this should be increased to a minimum of US$1 million in countries with expensive medical care such as the USA. 

Make sure that all the countries that you are sending your employees to and those that they are travelling through are included.  It is not unusual for dangerous ‘hot spots’ in the world or known areas of terrorist activity to be excluded.  In addition countries where treatment is expensive such as the USA are frequently excluded from standard cover to keep the cost down, so if your staff will be working in the States make sure cover is specifically included. 

There are a number of options you can consider either to keep international health insurance costs manageable or to provide a very high level of protection.  Group schemes with reduced premiums are frequently available for employers sending more than three employees to work overseas and you can frequently choose to take a higher or lower level of excess (the amount you will pay before the cover starts to reimburse your costs) to keep costs manageable.  Some policies also let you choose to provide additional cover for benefits such as well-being health checks, travel insurance or accident cover. 

A word of warning; it is unusual for health insurance policies to provide cover for medical conditions which are known to exist when the policy is taken out, so make sure that your staff are absolutely up front about their medical records.  Even here there are options to consider; many international health insurance policies will provide cover if your employee has been symptom and treatment free from a pre-existing condition for a long period and larger group schemes for employers providing cover to more than 30 members policies are available which disregard your expatriate employees’ medical histories completely. 

Other important points to consider are whether your plan includes emergency evacuation to get your employee home if they have a life-threatening condition which cannot be treated locally and 24 hour multi-lingual medical assistance help lines as it can be very stressful for your employees to try to describe their conditions in a foreign language. 

While international health insurance plans for expatriate staff are widely available, there are far fewer insurers which provide international cover for income protection and life insurance.  Again however the same rules apply, make sure that the cover you are buying is sufficient for your expatriate employees needs.  Remember that protecting your employees’ health and providing financial protection to their families will give them the peace of mind to focus fully on their job.