Is Insurance Enough When Employees Travel?

Illness, injury, violence and potential unrest. When employees travel abroad for business, there are multiple risks that have the potential to create foreign exposures for the employer. This session at the RIMS 2019 Annual Conference & Exhibition addressed available coverage and its capacity to adequately protect employees during international travel.

Speakers included:

• Andrew Miller, Director Special Projects, International SOS
• Kathleen Ellis, Senior Vice President, CNA International
• Erin Wilk, Global Security Travel Safety Manager, Facebook, Inc.

Companies need guidance to help navigating this risk. Not only are their hard costs related to cancelled travel, there are substantial risks related to the lost business and potential revenue that can occur from missed meetings and other opportunities.

Organizations must be proactive. Risk takes many forms and insurance offers many ways to address the exposure. Knowing how to piece together policies and benefits to create a true global risk management plan is a unique and valuable skill.

A foreign package policy is not the full answer. You must build connections with other lines of business – human resources, travel risk suppliers, legal advisors – to create a full program.

Where do you start? There are several coverages available.

Foreign Voluntary Workers’ Compensation / Employers’ Liability Coverage

• Voluntary coverage if your primary domestic workers’ compensation policy does not provide full coverage. This covers U.S. standard workers comp policy – state of hire benefits.
• 24-hour/7 days a week while employee is traveling on business travel.
• Endemic disease coverage and repatriation expense.

Business Travel Accidental Death & Dismemberment Coverage

• Operates similarly to a life insurance policy – insurance against AD&D in the case of a travel accident for both work and non-work related events for the employee, spouse and dependents
• Benefits are paid regardless of whether the traveler has other life or AD&D insurance.

Expatriate Medical

• Healthcare coverage for expats, which covers financial and other losses incurred.
• Insurance should be arranged prior to relocating to a new country.

Defence Base Act (DBA)

• DBA Insurance, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, is provided to employers to protect against injury incurred or disease contracted by an employee arising during employment.
• Covers persons employed at United States defense bases overseas.
• Designed to provide medical treatment and compensation to employees of defense contractors injured in the scope and course of employment.

Kidnap and Ransom (K&R)

• Covers the perils of kidnap, extortion, wrongful detention and hijacking.
• Reimburses for ransom monies and expenses paid resulting directly from the kidnapping of an insured person(s) occurring during the policy period.
• Crisis response/intervention services should be provided as a part of the placement by security/partner firms specializing in these exposures.
• Support for pre-travel and risk mitigation in advance of the travel to remote/challenging countries/regions important.

A policy is just a piece of paper. What your employees are doing in full practice, however, makes the difference. It is important to create pre-travel training and awareness programs and train prior to the trip. It is worth the time and investment.