Business travel solutions

Our product, the Business Travel Insurance, is designed for all companies and organizations with business travelers and expats around the world and it is tailor made to your company's risk profile.

The main risks involved in international mobility include:

• Terrorism
• Kidnap for ransom;
  • The number of kidnapping cases doubled over the past six years
  • The number now stands at 10,000 per year, 10% of which involve business travelers
• Criminality
• Civil unrest and civil war
• Traffic accidents
• Medical risks

Employer obligations

Employers must comply with a number of obligations regarding employees traveling abroad on an incidental basis. These include:

• Informing employees about the risks of international mobility (traveling) and making a prior assessment of the safety of operational sites.
• Providing adequate information about risks and safety, and providing advice and training to the employees traveling to or stationed in high-risk areas.
• Preparing employees for international mobility and implementing a travel risk protocol.
• Preparing procedures for dealing with travel-related incidents.
• Concluding adequate insurance covering damage, injury and loss incurred by employees (Article 7:611 of the Dutch Civil Code).

More so than in the past, organizations have a duty of care to protect their employees during business travel. The potential risks facing these employees have increased dramatically, ranging from medical problems and downtime of transportation links to natural disasters, security threats and loss of image.

Both employees and employers should be aware of the risks associated with international travel. It is also important that employers accept responsibility for the wellbeing and security of their employees when travelling on business assignments. Employees expect their employer to provide professional assistance at a time of crisis. An inability to fulfill these expectations will damage the company's image and reputation, with potentially serious financial consequences to both the employer and/or the employee.

Developments

Key starting points that must be identified and covered can be divided into three phases:

Anticipation phase

Preparing a travel management strategy based on country analyses and compiling an internal risk process, such as:

• Preparing and protecting employees when traveling to high-risk countries. Ensure that employees being posted abroad are well trained and experienced. Safety and security is a matter of many minor decisions. These are often based on individual experience, or the lack of it, as the case may be.
• Monitoring local and worldwide risks to ensure that employees are aware of possible risks and hazards in advance.
• Implementing and updating security procedures. Anticipating possible disruption due to domestic unrest, kidnapping, terrorism or accidents.
• Creating a safety, security and insurance plan that immediately becomes effective when a calamity arises, thus reducing the employer's risks and liability.

Prevention phase

• Always ensure you provide accurate, current information. This applies to both employees in the field and employees at head office. Any information from public sources such as TV news, news wires and social media is invaluable, as well as specialist sources such as the security analyses of specialist organizations.
• Specify the risks. Consult people in the field on an hourly basis to establish which risks the company deems acceptable. For example, should employees try to go to the airport in the event of a calamity, or should they stay in their hotel room? Provide safety and security training prior to posting employees by means an online module, for example.
• Arranging medical and/or business travel insurance with accident coverage plus full molest clause.

Response phase

If anything does happen, it is vital that the employer responds immediately and takes charge. Head office is responsible for taking any decision regarding evacuation, for example. The individual in the field quickly loses an overview and insight and could be emotionally biased. The decision to evacuate or not should be made by someone who is not involved in the situation. Making the right decisions during the first hour of a crisis is crucial.

Business Travel Insurance

If desired, we can provide professional assistance in setting up a global travel program. As an employer, you cannot afford to implement standard solutions. Safety and security relating to international travel always require specific and tailored insurance solutions.

We work with all business travel insurance providers so that we can manage your risks on all the above criteria.

If you would like our advice or a quotation, please contact our senior consultant International People Mobility Arno Rietveld, arno.rietveld@aon.nl.