The hire you want is deciding whether to move their family
Another 50,000 on the package is appreciated. Cover answers the question salary cannot, which is what happens to us if something goes wrong out here. For a senior or regional hire deciding whether to move their family, that question sits somewhere behind every other line in the offer.
What the offer looks like from their side
Salary is the part of an offer a candidate can compare. They have another number from somewhere else and they know roughly what the market pays. Cover is the part they cannot compare, because they have never had to use it here and have no idea what it is worth until they do.
Most senior hires are not moving alone. There is usually a partner who will not be working for a while, and often children. Residents here have a subsidised public tier to fall back on. An expatriate family does not, so the bill arrives in full whichever hospital they end up in. That is the number a candidate cannot see from the outside, and it is the one their partner asks about.
Salary is also the easiest line for another employer to beat, and it is the one your hire re-benchmarks every year. Cover is quieter. It gets noticed at the moment someone is working out whether this company looks after its people, and that moment usually arrives at the worst possible time.
One part of this has a deadline built into it, and it is a reason to get the scheme right rather than to ask anyone anything. Maternity runs on its own clock, because waiting periods mean cover has to be in place long before it is needed, and plenty of company schemes cap it low or leave it out. Settle that line when the scheme is designed and it is never a conversation with an individual.
What cover is worth on a senior package
For HR directors and CFOs
Building a package that holds onto senior and regional people, or working out what the medical line is actually worth in it.
What cover is worth on a senior package
Why thirty thousand of medical cover and fifty thousand of salary are not the same offer to someone deciding whether to move their family. With the numbers worked through.
Your Jakarta hire and your Singapore hire
A regional business ends up with people in several countries and, usually, several different standards of cover. The person in Singapore is fine. The person in Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh City is on whatever was available locally, and finds out what that means the first time they need a hospital.
An international scheme is written around the person rather than the country. Where the plan allows it, your Jakarta hire and your Singapore hire go on the same terms, and treatment outside their base country is usually part of it. The detail differs by plan, so the terms are worth reading before anyone needs them.
Moving someone off cover they already hold is the part to plan carefully. A new insurer usually underwrites them again, so a condition covered on the old plan may come across excluded or loaded, and waiting periods can start again. For anyone already in treatment that matters a great deal. It is workable, but it is worth knowing before you commit rather than after.
If your people deploy to worksites rather than offices, evacuation is the part that decides everything else, and it comes with its own set of questions. Offshore and deployed teams.
What changes when everyone is on the same scheme is not really the administration. It is that a regional move stops being the one your leadership treats as a risk.
What a scheme looks like
The mechanics, for whoever has to run this once the decision is made.
From 3 staff up
You do not need a large headcount to have a scheme. We arrange them from 3 staff upward, which is usually where the argument starts anyway, with the first few people you cannot afford to lose.
One policy, one renewal date
Instead of separate plans bought at different times on different terms, the company holds one policy with one renewal date. Joiners go on it, leavers come off it, and nobody is tracking a separate anniversary for every hire.
The paperwork is ours
Enrolments, additions, a leaver, a new baby, a change of country, a document an insurer says it never received. That is where a scheme quietly goes wrong. We handle that side of it, and it is the same person every time, so you are not explaining your scheme again to whoever picks up.
It costs you nothing extra
We are paid by commission built into the premium. The price is the same whether you come to us or go direct to the insurer, and what differs is who does the work afterwards.
Where you are with it
The right conversation depends on which one of these you are actually in.
- My renewal premium has increasedWorth understanding what is driving it before deciding what to change.
- Retaining talentBenefits matter more when someone is relocating their family.
- A workforce that does not sit in one countryCover that onboards anywhere and travels with them.
- Setting up benefits for the first timeNo existing scheme to compare against, just a decision to make.
For whoever runs your renewal
The renewal lands, someone asks for a census, and nobody can remember what was agreed last year.
The renewal season checklist
What to have ready, when to start, and the questions worth asking before you accept an increase. One page, written for the person who actually does it.
What this costs
Headcount, ages and how the scheme is built decide the price, so we quote it rather than publish it.
Tell us how many people, roughly what ages, and which countries they sit in, and we will come back with what it looks like. If you already have a scheme, the useful moment is about 60 days before it renews, so send us the date and we will start there.