“The cheapest parachute isn’t a bargain if it doesn’t open. Same with international private medical insurance (IPMI),” said Alban Bytyqi, EMEA reward consultant at employer Ricoh Europe.
His comments came as he discussed the rocketing cost of IPMI at the IPMI Summit organised by Health & Protection, the sister title of Benefits Expert.
Bytyqi acknowledged that as global healthcare costs have risen more than 10 percent a year for three years in a row, the price of such benefits is a major consideration for international employers.
However, he argued that IPMI is vital for business performance.
“If healthcare anxiety is keeping your people awake, it’s also keeping your business goals out of reach,” he said.
A failed international assignment can cost three to five times the employee’s annual salary, he stated, while up to 50 percent of employees returning from overseas leave their employer within one to two years. He also cited figures showing that 49 percent of expatriates report job-related burnout, while more than 80 percent say mental health support can influence their decision to stay with an employer.
“If we’re losing or disengaging nearly half our mobile workforce, we’re not just managing talent poorly, we’re mismanaging business risk,” he said.
“If you’re asking people to cross borders for you, you need to build bridges that carry them there safely.”
“The business goal is the destination. The assignee is the driver. IPMI is the safe vehicle and smooth road that gets them there,” he said.
“We’re sending our colleagues out there, they’re humans just like us. They have families, and they have needs that need to be met. Ultimately, that supports the business function while they are there and when they come back.”
Earlier in the day, fellow summit speaker Kelly McCain, director of international expansion at Business Group on Health, presented research that showed that leaders and c-suite executives are taking an ever closer interest in IPMI. This is ramping up the focus on whether providers are offering employers value for money.
Bytyqi was asked if he thought this would result in more employers moving providers, and if so whether they would go for lower cost products.
“The cheaper bit, on the face of it sounds cheaper, but you still have to do a lot of work, off boarding from one provider and onboarding to another. That takes a lot of work and time,” he said.
Citing past experiences, he said he had realised that the cost of time and dealing with different contracts wasn’t very cheap.
Quality of service is also important, he said, adding that his employer had worked hard with their provider to bring costs down, which for them was a better route.
