Health and life cover for companies — an independent written review
Insuring a distributed team on a single policy is the right instinct and the details decide whether it works. Which underwriting basis you qualify for, whether a policy issued here is even lawful there, and what happens to someone the day they leave. We read those before you sign, and we tell you when your current programme is already fine.
No obligation · We reply with a scope, not a quote
Not ready? Read what actually decides a group programme
What a company review covers
Three things, and the middle one is where the money is.
Brokers compete on premium because premium is easy to compare. The terms are worth more, and almost nobody negotiates them.
What the programme actually says
We read the policy, not the brochure. Most benefits programmes are bought once and renewed by inertia, and the wording that decides a claim is rarely the wording anyone was shown. We tell you what your people are actually covered for, in a document you can hand to them.
What to negotiate, and it is usually not the premium
Price is the thing brokers compete on because it is the thing that is easy to compare. The terms are worth more: whether someone can move between plans without fresh health questions, what happens to cover when they relocate, how a pre-existing condition is treated on joining. Those decide whether the programme works for the person it matters most to.
What it costs you to hold, and how we are paid
We publish how we are paid and on what basis: international cover is placed on a courtage basis, and the insurer pays a brokerage fee when a policy is placed. You should be able to check it rather than be asked to believe it. If the honest recommendation is to leave your programme alone, that is what the report will say.
And if the honest recommendation is to leave your programme alone, that is what the report will say. It is the same report either way.
What actually decides a group programme
Four things, and only one of them is the price.
The prize is the underwriting, not the premium. A quote sheet compares price because price is the only column that lines up. But the thing that decides whether your programme is worth having is the underwriting basis. Above a certain group size insurers will write cover on a medical-history-disregarded basis — pre-existing conditions in, no individual health questions, new joiners added without a form. ⚑ The threshold varies by insurer and is commonly quoted somewhere between ten and twenty insured lives; it is not a rule and we would confirm it for your actual headcount. What is certain is the shape of the difference: the colleague who would be loaded, excluded or declined on an individual application is simply covered. No discount is worth as much, and almost nobody negotiates for it.
A policy issued in the wrong country can be worth nothing. A single international contract is administratively lovely and, in several markets, does not satisfy the law. Some countries require cover issued locally by a locally licensed insurer, and treat insurance sold by an unlicensed one as unlawful rather than merely ineffective — exposing the company, not only the policy. The Gulf states with mandatory schemes are the ones our clients meet most often, and the rule there is the employer's problem by design. This is the question to ask before the renewal, not after somebody's residence permit is refused.
What happens to someone the day they leave. Group cover ends with employment, usually at the end of that month, and at exactly the moment a person is least able to buy their own. The fix is a continuation option: the right to move onto an individual policy with the same insurer without fresh medical underwriting. It is negotiable, it costs the company nothing, and it appears on no comparison sheet — so it is almost never asked for. It is the single most valuable thing we have added to a programme that already looked fine.
In Switzerland, the eight-hour line. Everyone employed in Switzerland is insured against occupational accidents through the employer's compulsory UVG cover. Only those working at least eight hours a week for the same employer are also insured for non-occupational accidents — the ones that happen at the weekend, which is most of them. Part-time and hourly staff below that line are not covered by your policy off the clock, and the people most likely to assume they are, are the people who took the accident exclusion off their basic health insurance when they started working for you. Two ordinary decisions, one real gap, and the employer is usually the last to hear about it.
The eight-hour rule is the Federal Office of Public Health's, checked 2026-08-06 and linked at the foot of this page. Anything marked ⚑ is a market figure we have not confirmed against a carrier's own underwriting manual, and we would confirm it for your headcount rather than quote it at you.
Before you speak to anyone, including us
What a team costs to insure, by country.
The first thing a finance team asks is what the range looks like, and it is usually the hardest number to get without entering a sales process. So here it is, from an independent fifty-country benchmark rather than from us: the same comprehensive international cover priced in nine representative markets.
The spread is the point. A person in United States costs roughly 2.9 times a person in Morocco for comparable cover, and a headcount plan that treats a seat as a seat will be wrong by that much. These are individual-policy averages — a negotiated corporate scheme will not match them, and the index says so itself — but the ratios between countries hold, and the ratios are what a budget actually needs.
| 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 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $8,191 | $11,513 | $15,476 | $11,727 |
| 15 | Switzerland | $6,392 | $8,017 | $12,328 | $8,912 |
| 25 | Canada | $5,343 | $7,573 | $10,580 | $7,832 |
| 34 | Germany | $5,081 | $7,099 | $9,741 | $7,307 |
| 44 | Netherlands | $4,748 | $6,539 | $8,931 | $6,739 |
| 50 | Morocco | $4,400 | $5,925 | $8,430 | $6,251 |
What we are not going to do
No headcounts, no league tables.
You will not find a client count on this page, or a number of countries served, or a logo wall. Those are the easiest things in this industry to write down and the hardest to verify, which is exactly why everybody publishes them.
What we will put in writing instead: who reads your programme, how we are paid for reading it, and the reasoning behind every recommendation. Those three are checkable. A headcount is not.
It is a slower argument and it costs us something on a first impression. We think it is the only one worth making to somebody who is going to hand our report to their finance team.
What we see in company programmes
Three ways this goes wrong, and all three are avoidable.
Renewed by inertia for years
A programme put in place for a company of one size is still in place at three times that size, with the same wording and the same exclusions. Nobody re-reads it, because re-reading it is nobody's job. The first review of an old programme is almost always the one that pays for itself.
A benefit that fails the person who needed it
The employee who moves country, the one with a condition that predates the policy, the one whose family is not on the scheme. Each is individually rare and collectively certain, and each is decided by a clause nobody negotiated. These are the cases that turn a benefit into a grievance.
Buying group cover as if it were one product
An internationally mobile team is not one population. Somebody in Lisbon, somebody in Dubai and somebody in Singapore face different rules, different public systems and different exclusions. A single scheme can still be right — but only if it was chosen knowing that, rather than in spite of it.
Any of these sound like your situation? See how a review works
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. Every question you bring gets an answer. We compare the international insurers on how each of them behaves in your situation — underwriting, renewal, exclusions, and what happens on the day a claim is filed. If there is already a policy in force, we go through it clause by clause. Nothing is pitched at the end of it.
Your Private Client Report
One working day later, your Private Client Report arrives — around twelve pages setting out what we found, what we weighed it against, what each option costs, and why we would choose one over the others. 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 Cleveland Clinic charges $1,690 for a written second opinion. Ours comes with the review, and there is no fee for it.
The team
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
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 · Protection · Planning
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
Hans Steiner
Pension · Tax · Cross-border
Financial Planner IAF, Federal Diploma of Higher Education. German, English and French. Hans takes the cases where a move collides with a pension, with two tax systems, or with both at once.
Book with HansCompany questions
What companies actually ask us.
What do you actually do for a company?
We read what you already hold and write down what it does — what your people are covered for, where the wording is weak, and what is worth changing at the next renewal. Sometimes the answer is that the programme is fine and the money is better spent elsewhere. That answer is included in the price.
Is this only for large companies?
No, and the size that benefits most is smaller than people assume — a team of a dozen internationally mobile people has all the complexity of a large one and none of the in-house resource to handle it. What matters is whether your people cross borders, not how many of them there are.
How are you paid, and does that change what you recommend?
International cover is placed on a courtage basis: the insurer pays a brokerage fee when a policy is placed, calculated as a percentage of the premium. That basis is the answer to the second half of your question — a percentage gives us no reason to recommend more cover than a company needs, and no reason to steer it towards the most expensive plan. What it does give us a reason to do is place the programme well, because we review it with you every year and a programme that turns out to be wrong is our problem too. You can verify our registration rather than take our word for it: ⟨registration number and verification link — MISSING.md A1, A2⟩.
Can you negotiate better terms with insurers?
Terms are where the value usually sits, and they are more negotiable than premiums. Movement between plans without fresh health questions, treatment of pre-existing conditions on joining, what happens when someone relocates mid-year. What we have secured and with whom is ⟨to be stated precisely, or not at all — no carrier is named here until the arrangement can be described in writing⟩.
What do we get at the end?
A written report, and the reasoning behind every recommendation in it. Not a quote sheet and not a presentation — a document that survives the meeting, that your finance team can check and that your people can be shown. It is yours either way.
The next step
Tell us the shape of it. We'll tell you if there's anything worth doing.
Not a quote request. Four facts is enough for us to say whether your headcount reaches a better underwriting basis, whether any of your countries need cover issued locally, and whether your renewal date leaves time to change anything. If the answer is that your programme is already well built, that is a short reply and it costs you nothing to have received it.
Four short fields · A written scope by email, usually within a working day
Sources & verification
Where these facts come from.
A company will forward this page to a lawyer or a finance team, so it is worth being explicit about which claims here are load-bearing. The Swiss eight-hour rule is the Federal Office of Public Health's own, checked 2026-08-06. The cost table is an independent published benchmark, credited below. The underwriting-threshold figures are ⚑ market guidance rather than any carrier's underwriting manual, and are written as such — we would confirm them for your actual headcount before you relied on one.
- Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) — compulsory accident insurance — PRIMARY, checked 2026-08-06. Confirms that every person employed in Switzerland is insured against occupational accidents under the UVG, and that non-occupational accident cover applies to those working at least eight hours a week for the same employer. The eight-hour line on this page is this source.
- Federal Act on Accident Insurance (UVG, SR 832.20) — ⚑ The Act itself governs when cover starts and ends after employment, and how the occupational and non-occupational premiums are split between employer and employee. We have not quoted article text here because we could not read it directly from Fedlex, and we do not paraphrase statute we have not read.
- SIP Health Cost Index 2025 — SIP Medical Family Office — PRIMARY. The per-country cost benchmark on this page. Averages for individual policies across seven international insurers; the index notes that corporate schemes differ but that it remains a good approximation of effective cost per country.
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 reviewOr write to hello@expatsavvy.com — we reply within the working day.