Health insurance for corporate expatriates and posted employees
The package covers the posting. Not the person.
Corporate expat cover is negotiated for a workforce and worn by individuals — good in general, generic exactly where your household is specific. The gaps are findable at offer stage, when everything is still negotiable.
In brief
Is your employer’s expat health insurance enough?
Often nearly. The gap is household-shaped, and cheapest to find at offer stage.
- The package covers the posting, not the person: negotiated for a workforce, generic where your household is specific.
- A treaty can keep you in the home system: with a certificate of coverage, where an agreement covers your pair of countries.
- Localisation is the cliff: the day you localise, the group policy’s logic changes, and your family’s cover with it.
Three facts under every expat package.
Before comparing anything: what a corporate posting structurally does to your insurance position.
The package covers the posting, not the person
Corporate expat cover is negotiated for a workforce and worn by individuals. It is usually good — and generic where your life is specific: the spouse's career, the chronic condition, the child's school country, the parents you visit. The gap between the package and the household is your gap to find, because HR is not looking for it.
Treaties can keep you in the home system
Posted workers are the people social-security agreements were written for: the right certificate can keep you in your home scheme instead of the host's — we verified the Japan–Switzerland mechanism and Québec's agreement list directly. Whether that is available, and whether it is better, is a per-pair-of-countries answer worth getting before the flight, not after payroll runs.
Localisation is the cliff nobody dates
Expat packages end: contracts localise, assignments convert, companies change their minds. The day you localise, the group policy's logic changes — and your family's cover with it, in whatever country and at whatever age you have reached. The package has an end date even when the posting does not. Plan for the date.
The strongest version of every fix on this page is the offer-stage version. The week before you sign is worth more than the year after you land.
Your package, your household, your pair of countries.
Three specifics decide everything, and all three are yours alone. The package: group policies differ by employer and by negotiation round — the ceiling, the family clause, the home-country cover, the localisation terms. The household: a working spouse, a child’s school country and a chronic condition each test different pages of it.
And the pair of countries: whether a social-security treaty lets you stay in the home system with a certificate of coverage is a per-pair answer — real and verified for some pairs (Japan–Switzerland since 2012; Québec’s agreement list), absent for others — and the host state may mandate local cover regardless of any package, as the Gulf does and Japan does differently. We hold the verified rules for twenty-seven countries.
Bring the offer letter and the policy summary before you sign, and we read them against the household and the country pair — the ceiling against real local prices, the clauses against your actual family, the treaty against your actual passports. An hour, in writing, while it is still negotiable. That is the consultation.
Same sentence in the offer letter. Very different sum.
"Health insurance covered" means something different in every posting. On comparable international cover the index puts the United States at roughly $17,970 a year and Malaysia at about $7,330. Same employer, same grade, same clause — two and a half times the value.
Which matters for three reasons, none of them abstract. It tells you what the benefit is worth when you are comparing two offers. It tells you what you are exposed to if the scheme covers you but not your family — the gap is priced per person, and in Hong Kong or Singapore it is a large one. And it tells you what you would be buying on your own if the job ended, which is the month the cover ends too.
The figures are for individual policies. A corporate scheme is negotiated and will not match them. But the ratios between countries hold, and the ratios are the part that decides whether a package is generous or merely worded generously.
| Rank | Country | At 24 | At 35 | At 50 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $12,773 | $18,765 | $22,368 | $17,969 |
| 2 | Hong Kong (SAR) | $11,360 | $15,822 | $21,344 | $16,175 |
| 3 | Singapore | $10,065 | $13,967 | $18,662 | $14,231 |
| 15 | Switzerland | $6,392 | $8,017 | $12,328 | $8,912 |
| 34 | Germany | $5,081 | $7,099 | $9,741 | $7,307 |
| 33 | Malaysia | $5,146 | $7,242 | $9,612 | $7,333 |
Source: SIP Health Cost Index 2025, SIP Medical Family Office. Data as at August 2025, published 1 December 2025. Averages across seven international insurers and three standard profiles — not quotes, and not a comparison of those insurers against each other. Any comparison or tax-adjusted figure above is our own arithmetic on SIP's published numbers.
Three ways good packages go wrong.
Filing the group policy unread
It arrived with the contract, it sounds comprehensive, and its edges are precisely where your household is unusual: the annual ceiling against the host country's prices, the family definition against your family, the home-country clause against your visits, the exclusions against your history. One reading, at the start, with your actual life beside it.
Missing the treaty window
Certificates of coverage are typically arranged around the posting's start — through employers and institutions that move at institutional speed. Discover the treaty a year in and you may have paid twice, or fallen between two systems' contribution histories. The check costs twenty minutes at offer stage. We keep the verified mechanics on file for the countries we cover.
Confusing the employer’s continuity with yours
Group cover follows the contract; your insurability follows you. Build nothing personal during the covered years and localisation, separation or retirement arrives with no private history at an age underwriting notices. The covered years are exactly when a personal layer is cheapest to start — and when it feels least necessary. Both facts are the point.
Any of these sound like your situation? See how a review works
What a first review actually looks like.
Arranging international cover for the first time, or checking what you already hold — the process is the same, in this order.
The demand intake
Right after you book, we email you a short intake form. Where you are, where you're going, who's coming with you, anything you already hold. It takes a few minutes, and it means the 45 minutes start prepared — with your situation, not with paperwork.
We study your situation
Not products first. Your life first. We look at the country you're moving to and what it legally requires, the country after that if there is one, who depends on you, and where the real exposure sits. We don't quote anything at this stage.
The consultation
45 minutes, by video, in English. We work through the questions that matter in your situation: underwriting, renewal, exclusions and treatment geography. If you already hold cover, we read its wording and personal endorsements. We identify what is clear and what still needs the insurer's written confirmation.
Your Private Client Report
One working day later, your Private Client Report arrives — around twelve pages setting out what we found, the alternatives considered, available cost information, and the reasons for our recommendation. Any missing documents or insurer answers are identified as open questions. What to arrange, what to keep, and where you are paying for something that isn't doing any work. Sometimes the report says: keep what you have. It is yours either way.
45 minutes. By video, wherever you are. Free. Nothing has to change afterwards.
The people who'll actually review your situation.
Specialists by topic, not a rota. You'll know who you're speaking to before you book, and you'll speak to the same person again next year.
Robert Kolar
Health insurance expert
Twenty-plus years spent on the distance between what a health policy promises and what it pays when a claim actually lands. German and English. He has been the foreigner working out somebody else's health system from the outside, which is its own kind of qualification.
Book with Robert
Nicole Bohne
Life and protection expert
Spent her career inside Basler Versicherung and Zurich Insurance before crossing to this side of the table. Nicole reads a life-cover decision against the whole household — who depends on whom, what already exists, and whether the answer is a policy at all.
Book with Nicole
Virginie Josten
IPMI expert
Came to insurance from luxury and consulting, where the clients were demanding and the work was international. Then a Swiss insurer’s international desk — cross-border employees, expats and retirees abroad. Legal training and a master’s from Paris Dauphine. English and French.
Book with Virginie
Davide Nezel
IPMI expert
FINMA-certified independent insurance intermediary, who began in financial advice at Swiss Life. He works with globally mobile households, and coordinates with the insurer when a medical need actually arises — which is where a policy is finally tested. German, French and English.
Book with Davide
Chantal Leprêtre
Client Advisor
Client advisor for international private medical insurance at SIP Medical Family Office, the partner through which international cover is placed. She works from London, in English and French.
Book with ChantalWhat posted employees actually ask us.
My employer provides international health insurance. Is that enough?
Often nearly — and the "nearly" is household-shaped. Group policies are negotiated for a workforce: read yours against your specifics — the ceiling versus your host country’s prices, the family definition versus your family, home-country cover versus your visits, and what happens at localisation or separation. Where it is genuinely enough, our review says exactly that, in writing, and you buy nothing.
Can I stay in my home country’s social security while posted abroad?
Frequently, if a social-security agreement covers your pair of countries: posted workers can remain in the home system with a certificate of coverage — the Japan–Switzerland agreement, in force since 2012, is a mechanism we verified against the official guides, and Québec’s agreement list can waive its waiting period for arrivals from treaty countries including Switzerland. The certificate is usually arranged at posting start — check at offer stage.
What should I check before accepting a posting?
Four things, all cheaper to fix at offer stage: exactly who of your household is on the employer policy and to what ceiling; whether a social-security treaty applies to your country pair and who files the certificate; what the host country legally requires regardless of your package (some mandate local enrolment or local policies — the Gulf and Japan differently, both verified on our country pages); and what the package becomes at localisation. Bring the offer; we read it with you.
What is localisation and why does everyone warn about it?
The conversion of an expat package into a local contract — usually years in, usually framed as administrative. For insurance it is structural: group expat cover typically ends or shrinks, and you join the host system and market at your current age and history, in whatever country the career landed. The warn is because the date is movable by negotiation while the consequences are not — households that saw it coming negotiated cover into the localisation; households that did not, discovered it at renewal.
We are a family where only one of us has the corporate package.
The most common corporate-expat household, and the package rarely says clearly what it does about it: a working spouse may be outside the group policy and outside the host system’s automatic cover, children may be covered only in named countries, and the whole family’s position can differ from the employee’s. We map each person separately against the package and the host country’s actual rules — it is an hour, and it is the hour that finds the uninsured member before a hospital does.
Reading on this situation.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Australia's visa condition 8501, for employersAustralia's health cover duty for sponsored staff is condition 8501 on the granted visa, not employment law — and it names no insurance product at all.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Brazil for employers: the collective plan protection gapBrazilian collective health plans — what companies buy — sit outside the renewal guarantee that protects individual plans, and reprice on different rules.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Relocating staff to Canada: there is no Canadian health planCanada has no single health plan. Ontario covers arrivals immediately, British Columbia takes the arrival month plus two, Quebec counts from registration.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Costa Rica for employers: CAJA tracks residency, not payrollCosta Rica's compulsory CAJA enrolment sits in the migration law, not the labour code — it follows residency, and a lapse can block a permit renewal.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Cyprus for employers: the gate into GESY is a payrollEmployment is one of only five gates into Cyprus's GESY, so a local contract and a secondment land two identical hires in different health systems.
- Facts checked 2026-09-06Employing people in France: public rights and the workplace mutuellePrivate-sector employers must offer complementary health cover and fund at least half. Check registration, effective rights, family benefits and international gaps.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Insuring a team in Germany: the GKV and PKV thresholdGerman employers buy no group health plan — they co-fund each employee's own policy. Above €77,400 gross in 2026, an employee may choose private cover.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Indonesia for employers: the evacuation BPJS does not coverBPJS Kesehatan enrolment satisfies Indonesian law for staff working six months or more. It does not fund the evacuation a serious archipelago case needs.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Moving staff to Japan: Shakai Hoken and the 14-day clockJapanese employers enrol full-time staff in Shakai Hoken. Everyone outside that net — contractors, spouses, leavers — has 14 days to join municipal NHI.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Malaysia for employers: the 6% tax and the SKHPPA dutySince 1 July 2025 a 6% tax sits on private healthcare for non-citizens in Malaysia. Employment Pass staff have no mandated cover floor — permit workers do.
- Facts checked 2026-09-06Group medical insurance in Mexico and the IMSSFor employers in Mexico: check IMSS registration, private hospital access, group medical benefits and each product's joining and renewal conditions separately.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Hiring into the Netherlands: the duty starts on day oneA Dutch hire is liable at once, not four months later. The window only backdates the cover — and the onboarding briefing is the employer's real job.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Philippine group health insurance: the ceilingPhilippine group HMOs run on a Maximum Benefit Limit — Maxicare publishes ₱100,000 to ₱250,000 a year for consultations, diagnostics and hospital care.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Moving staff to Portugal: two stages, two insurance asksPortugal asks for insurance twice and names a sum at neither stage. The €30,000 twelve-month spec is Schengen short-stay — the wrong rulebook entirely.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Qatar for employers: no cover, no visa, no hireQatar's Article 10 bars the entry visa, the residence permit and the act of employing an expatriate without proof of health cover for the whole period.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Group medical insurance in Saudi ArabiaSaudi employers' health insurance duty covers employees and the family members they support — a correction to what we published, and the opposite of Dubai.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Employer group health insurance in SingaporeSingapore mandates S$60,000 of cover for S Pass and Work Permit holders, nothing for Employment Pass professionals. MediShield Life reaches none of them.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Hiring in South Africa: the late-joiner clock nobody resetsSouth African schemes must accept your hire. The late-joiner formula still runs on the individual, and cover held abroad counts for nothing toward it.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Employing people in Spain: why companies add private coverRegistering staff in Spanish social security carries public health entitlement. The private layer companies add buys speed and language, not better care.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Insuring a team in Switzerland: the eight-hour accident lineIn Switzerland the employer owes accident cover, not health insurance — and only staff working eight-plus hours a week are covered off the clock by UVG.
- Facts checked 2026-09-06Employing staff in Thailand: what social security missesConfirm Thai employment-linked health rights, then compare private hospital access, dependants, leaver terms and visa evidence for each employee.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16UAE expat group medical insurance, by emirateDependants are an emirate question. Abu Dhabi's employers cover the family, Dubai's leave it to the sponsor. We used to answer for the country as a whole.
- Facts checked 2026-08-10Group medical insurance for US assignmentsMost international health policies are written 'worldwide excluding USA', so a US transfer leaves the assignee covered everywhere except where they live.
- Facts checked 2026-09-06A second opinion on the insurance cover you already holdFive checks for an existing international health policy before a move, renewal or switch, and how to distinguish a finding from a question for the insurer.
- Facts checked 2026-09-06Who reads your policies? One adviser across every borderWhat an international insurance adviser checks across a household’s policies, how the written review works and how insurer-paid courtage affects incentives.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01Reading your schedule: the five-minute area-of-cover checkOne line on your policy schedule decides whether you are insured in America. Most people have never read it. Here is how, and what each wording means.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Deductible, franchise, excess: one concept, five namesDeductible, excess, franchise and retention name one mechanism: the first slice you pay. The national versions, and the cap that decides your worst year.
- Facts checked 2026-08-16Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh: four rules, one assumptionA correction: Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi reach the family, Dubai does not, and Qatar's real distinction is sequencing rather than family scope.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01International organisation health schemes: the five edgesAn IO or mission scheme is usually good cover that fails at its edges: third-country treatment, family definitions, between-posting gaps, evacuation, exit.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01The offer-stage insurance check: one week before you signA posting's insurance terms are negotiable for one week — the one before your signature. Four checks: the ceiling, the family, the treaty, localisation.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01How to read a policy schedule in fifteen minutesA policy schedule is your personalised contract, not the brochure. The nine lines that decide a claim — geography, renewal, ceiling, cost-sharing.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01When not to buy international health insuranceFive situations where the honest answer is don't: a compulsory local scheme already has you, a treaty covers you, or the local rule rejects the policy.
- Facts checked 2026-08-01What "worldwide cover" actually meansWorldwide cover is a defined term with edges: the area-of-cover line, home-country limits, per-trip day caps and sub-limits. Where worldwide stops.
Ready for a calm conversation about cover?
A first review is free — 45 minutes, in English, wherever in the world you happen to be. We'll listen first. Then you'll hear exactly what we would arrange if the situation were ours. What you do with that is yours to decide.
Book a review