What is Business Travel Insurance?
In 2019, up to 8.6 million British travellers set off without insurance cover. What risks does this pose to businesses and what protection can the right cover offer your organisation?
As welcome as a few additional days away might sound, they can clearly have a significant impact on your business. Missed deadlines, business interruption, and additional costs to take on replacement staff or contractors can be very costly, or even potentially ruinous to your organisation.
What Key Elements Does BTI Cover?
Healthcare
Delays
Property
Sickness Cover – Some policies cover costs related to absence from work due to illness, wherever it occurs (home or away). This provides a valuable element of sick pay. It can be returned either to the individual in the form of tax-deductible receivable sick pay, or paid as a benefit to the company. This can be used as the company sees fit, which may include mitigation of the costs of employing temporary replacement staff.
Travelling Without Business Insurance
The Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) provides healthcare to individuals in participating countries. As it is funded by taxes, it is free at the point of use, however it generally provides baseline cover only and has limitations on the treatment you can get abroad, depending on the country. See more about what's covered with a GHIC here: https://www.ghicdirect.co.uk/whats-covered
Key Considerations
Is your journey covered?
Existing business cover usually has a strict territorial limit imposed. Most companies even distinguish between the UK mainland and Northern Ireland, let alone cross-channel and intercontinental activity. So, ensure your policy meets your needs, including cover in the areas you travel to.
Using personal travel cover – Few policies adequately provide for business travel needs, and the limited cover available is best for last-minute or temporary situations only. Holiday insurance has a multitude of limitations and vulnerabilities that become exposed by the scale and difference of risks associated with business activity. Charities and Third Sector organisations are often active in underdeveloped or higher-risk locations and potentially against the FCO travel advice given for normal travellers. Business travel takes into account the nature of activity but also the specific risk posed by the location.
Using the wrong product can be as costly as no cover at all. You may find the confidence of resting upon an inadequate product misplaced when it is invalidated by undeclared business activity or pre-existing medical conditions.
Operational Impacts
Could the business withstand the temporary or permanent loss of key personnel such as senior leaders or highly qualified employees?
Wider Costs to Business
Travel-related illness and absence costs in terms of sick pay. PMI or private medical insurance can be deployed as an effective cost prevention measure in this scenario, providing for urgent and appropriate treatment and recovery for acute medical health situations. In short, if personnel fall sick, they are treated as quickly and appropriately as possible with the goal of accelerating their return to work.
Equipment
Personal belongings but also business equipment, products, and samples. Laptops, tablets, phones, and cameras covered for damage, loss, but compromised security (e.g., loss or misuse of data). There is cover for the loss of or damage to baggage, but also loss of business documents and travel documents. There is additional provision for the full cost of local legal representation in the event of a serious matter arising under local law.
Delays and Cancellation
Delays and cancellations run to much more than replacement tickets and flights. Again, the business consequences may be far greater where multiple travel connections are disrupted or events occurring at destinations are disrupted. Quality business travel insurance includes options to ensure that when travel is called off for major reasons, the consequent costs are not borne by the business. This includes circumstances such as:
Natural disaster
Fire or flood occurring at home
Accident or illness
Bereavement of a loved or close relative
Call to jury service
Unsafe destination due to military conflict, political or civil unrest
Kidnap and terrorism cover
With a heavy focus on risk management, let us not overlook the positive side of taking good advice when it comes to business travel. Executive travel cover may extend its comprehensive scope to holidays for the families of executives, which addresses the inconvenience of switching between personal and corporate covers, thereby eliminating costly omissions and errors. Once the economies of scale are factored in, arranging a single plan for the whole year works out at a significant saving against multiple covers for individual trips.
Personal holiday exposure may be limited to the personal impacts. They are inconvenient, possibly even painful. Business travel extends the scope to include the consequences of the peril, which can be wide-reaching and difficult to contain, for example, failure to maintain contractual obligations or impacts on a third party’s business activity. The scale of the loss can be larger by an order of magnitude.
