Business Travel Insurance: Understanding Challenges and Making Informed Decisions
A multinational business travel insurance program can help companies provide comprehensive and consistent protection to all traveling employees in one centrally controlled, compliant solution.
ACE European Risk Briefing: Changing Multinational Risks and Evolving Solutions
European companies are becoming ever more international in outlook, as globalisation continues and as economic weakness at home drives the search for revenue further afield, especially in emerging markets. But this growing internationalisation exposes them to greater complexity and almost nine out of ten companies in this study say their risk profile is, in turn, becoming more multinational. Achieving consistent, compliant insurance cover is becoming difficult under traditional approaches that depend on a single global policy or a patchwork of uncoordinated local arrangements. A comprehensive multinational programme is usually a better solution. Our study of risk managers across major European markets shows that multinational insurance programmes are now widely held to provide greater consistency of cover, reduce the risk of non- compliance and potentially to help drive down the cost of insurance. Multinational programmes are rapidly becoming the industry standard. Indeed, the most telling statistic for me from this study is that 83% of European risk managers expect to increase their use of multinational insurance programmes over the next three years. In addition to traditional risk areas such as property and casualty, this report highlights a trend among risk managers towards managing specialist and emerging exposures within a multinational programme structure. This is a trend we are certainly seeing at ACE, from business travel and group personal accident risk to directors and officers and environmental liability. Our research also points to some specific areas for improvement. Fewer than 30% of risk managers are currently very satisfied with overall service levels from their insurer in respect of their multinational programmes. Fewer still are very satisfied with claims performance (surely the acid test of any insurance programme), insurer responsiveness to their budgetary pressures, consistency of coverage and availability of effective technology solutions. All of these are areas where ACE continues to invest in building out its multinational proposition, and our recent launch of a new Global Accounts division highlights our focus on providing a consistent and client-focused service, wherever a corporation is based. Ultimately, we also recognise that every good multinational programme is the result of a close partnership between the client, their broker and insurer, and we look forward to working with intermediaries and risk managers across Europe – and beyond – to meet their evolving needs.
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Multinational
Wishful Thinking Versus Reality: Challenging the Assumptions of Certainty Behind Cross-Border Excess Insurance
So here’s the story so far. Given the lack of any meaningful attempt to harmonize insurance regulation worldwide, clients and brokers are rightly demanding a greater measure of certainty when insuring their ever more sophisticated and growing global portfolio of risks. Much of that certainty revolves around asking the right questions and making the right judgment calls when designing a multinational insurance programme. More specifically, up until now, the parties involved have understandably focused on the need to insure their local exposures with a local policy and then supplementing it (when appropriate) with a parent policy for those risks, which cannot be insured in a given jurisdiction.
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MultinationalStructuring Multinational Insurance Programmes: Anticipating Emerging Global Challenges for Captives
Multinational corporations have long known that traditional avenues of insurance-risk transfer can be efficiently supplemented by “risk financing” rather than self-insurance. Techniques such as the use of large deductibles and self-insured retentions, or the use of a captive (re)insurer are commonplace amongst astute multinational corporations. Captives, in particular, are increasingly seen as an effective risk management option both for organisations that seek cross-border insurance coverage, and for those seeking to insure difficult-to-place risks. Over the past three years, 70% of European risk managers confirm that they have increased their use of captive insurance arrangements.1
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Multinational
ACE European Risk Briefing: Changing Multinational Risks and Evolving Solutions
European companies are becoming ever more international in outlook, as globalisation continues and as economic weakness at home drives the search for revenue further afield, especially in emerging markets. But this growing internationalisation exposes them to greater complexity and almost nine out of ten companies in this study say their risk profile is, in turn, becoming more multinational.
Achieving consistent, compliant insurance cover is becoming difficult under traditional approaches that depend on a single global policy or a patchwork of uncoordinated local arrangements. A comprehensive multinational programme is usually a better solution. Our study of risk managers across major European markets shows that multinational insurance programmes are now widely held to provide greater consistency of cover, reduce the risk of non- compliance and potentially to help drive down the cost of insurance.
Multinational programmes are rapidly becoming the industry standard. Indeed, the most telling statistic for me from this study is that 83% of European risk managers expect to increase their use of multinational insurance programmes over the next three years.In addition to traditional risk areas such as property and casualty, this report highlights a trend among risk managers towards managing specialist and emerging exposures within a multinational programme structure. This is a trend we are certainly seeing at ACE, from business travel and group personal accident risk to directors and officers and environmental liability.
Our research also points to some specific areas for improvement. Fewer than 30% of risk managers are currently very satisfied with overall service levels from their insurer in respect of their multinational programmes. Fewer still are very satisfied with claims performance (surely the acid test of any insurance programme), insurer responsiveness to their budgetary pressures, consistency of coverage and availability of effective technology solutions.
All of these are areas where ACE continues to invest in building out its multinational proposition, and our recent launch of a new Global Accounts division highlights our focus on providing a consistent and client-focused service, wherever a corporation is based. Ultimately, we also recognise that every good multinational programme is the result of a close partnership between the client, their broker and insurer, and we look forward to working with intermediaries and risk managers across Europe – and beyond – to meet their evolving needs.
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MultinationalStructuring Multinational Insurance Programmes: Fundamental Questions for Directors and Officers to Ask Before they Assume Personal Liability
To indemnify or not to indemnify, is this really the question? This is the issue that global enterprises frequently debate when considering the liabilities of their directors and officers. But this perspective may be more representative of the company’s obligations and may not fully represent that of its directors or officers. What an individual director should be asking is “Am I actually indemnified or am I not?”
This report is in two parts. Consistent with the rest of ACE’s series of reports on how to structure a multinational insurance programme, the first part sets out the general principles which need to be considered when developing a multinational programme for any class of risk. The second part of the report looks at the specialised context of marine insurance, Contractors All Risk (CAR) and Erection All Risk (EAR), with their distinct characteristics, and examines the extent to which these principles apply. This report ends with a checklist of questions and issues that the marine insurance community as well as the property insurance community should be considering when designing and implementing a multinational programme insuring marine risks. Our conclusion is that while marine exemptions allow the insurance of marine risk to take place in a relatively benign environment from a compliance perspective, they are not a panacea. Buyers, brokers and insurers should not be lulled into thinking that, just because compliance issues have traditionally had a lower profile in marine insurance, they do not need careful consideration in our increasingly globalised world.
Structuring an efficient, cost-effective multinational insurance program requires a close understanding of the evolving regulatory environment. Traditionally, risk managers have focused on whether a local jurisdiction permits insurance from unlicensed insurers to insure local risks, i.e., non-admitted insurance. These regulatory developments are not limited to increased scrutiny of insurance companies; they encompass both local insurance brokers and the local operations of parent company insureds. Many multinational companies are potentially unaware that their global insurance programs may be subject to compliance challenges in certain jurisdictions, and the unanticipated reputational, tax and other financial repercussions this may cause.
