We have an increasing number of international assignees who are working in countries that we in the UK haven't previously had experience of with benefits, especially private medical insurance.
I do not know if I would get good economies of scale by looking to use a benefit broker to find private medical insurance for each of the assignees to each of the countries they will be working in versus asking the host country to provide an additional policy against their own employee benefit and we reimburse the company or individual back. Does anyone have any experience of which might work better in terms of setting a suitable policy up efficiently with a good end result for the assignee please?
We use Cigna as our provider for Global Medical plan currnetly, but there are a few players in this space to consider. A broker is the best way to way up the packages, based on the locations of the EEs. We have also negotiated with our local medical plan that if someone leaves the UK scheme, when they return, that there are no exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
Depending on your UK provider you may find that they have an International Healthcare policy that could give you some economies of scale. We use Cigna as our provider for both our UK and Global Health cover where we get an age /location based rate more economical than individual policies per country. Being with the same provider also allows for any medical history disregarded to be continuous if someone leaves the UK scheme to go on an overseas assignment, where they don't need to be treated as a complete new joiner when returning to the UK (i.e. no moratorium to be served).