Inpat Insurance

What does the term inpat insurance mean? Most recently it refers to insurance provided by a U.S. company for foreign nationals coming into the U.S. The opposite of an expat.. an inpat. Foreign nationals in the U.S. may need additional insurance not provided to U.S. outbound expatriates.

Of course, they need the traditional benefits like medical, life, and dental but inpats coming into the U.S may need other benefits both for the benefit of the employee and to remove liability from the U.S. employer. Good inpat insurance packages include both personal property insurance in the United States and personal liability insurance in the U.S. for the foreign national residing here.

The personal liability insurance is of particular importance. A company that sponsors foreign nationals to come and work in the U.S. on work visa needs to make sure they carry international personal liability insurance. An inpat in the U.S. that is sued but carries no personal liability insurance in the U.S. exposes the employer to being attached and named in the lawsuit when the foreign national cannot pay.

Best practices for expatriates dictates that employers who provide inpat insurance to expatriates in the United States provide a simple renters insurance policy with some property insurance coverage, and more importantly, international personal liability.

Expatriate Life Insurance Concerns

Expatriate Life Insurance should not be the last thing on one's mind when moving overseas to take an international assignment. Your family's future may be counting on it.

Any expatriate of high net worth should be encouraged to take out an individual expatriate life insurance plan to cover his or her family during the international assignment. Employer sponsored plans of 1 x or 2 x salary are inadequate to protect an expatriate's financial future in the event of unexpected death.

In addition, highly compensated expatriates may be capped at a $200,000 benefit or another limit set by the group life insurance plan. Expatriates working in most countries can carry $500,000 or more of life insurance for just a few thousand dollars a year for international term insurance. Of course, international life insurance rates will vary depending on age of the applicant and overall health in addition to the host country.

When looking at an international life insurance scheme, one should consider whether the life insurance will only be used for the term of the expatriate assignment, or if the insurance policy will be expected to continue once the expatriate returns to the home country. Some excellent programs will terminate the expatriate the moment of repatriation so please keep this in mind.

Local National Insurance

When a company expands globally and needs to hire local national employees, local national insurance is something that should be taken very seriously. In 2009, most countries around the world have non-admitted insurance laws that apply to extending insurance to local nationals. A local national is an employee hired to work in their home country for the multinational employer. For example, a Mexican national working in Mexico.

Non-admitted insurance laws for local nationals means the country legally requires that local national insurance solutions come from locally licensed and admitted insurers. Cutting through all the smoke, the reason for this is basic protectionism when it comes to most countries other than the U.S. and the EU.

In the U.S. many companies are required to work with admitted and locally licensed carriers by law to protect the consumer from insurance companies that may not be financially strong, or offer poor products. The main reason it's done abroad is so local revenue comes back to local companies for foreign national insurance and so U.S. and EU companies don't enter a country and steal away all the business from whatever local insurance companies exist in the country.

No matter what the reason, companies should take this seriously. Local national insurance that is placed with a non-admitted carrier is criminal in many countries. Employers should not take the easy way out and place local nationals with offshore or non-admitted insurance carriers.

Group Medical Insurance for Expatriates

McKinley International Risk Management has compiled a list of the advantages of an expatriate group insurance program for expatriates. Most companies wait until the expat group has grown to a larger number, or wait until a problem occurs to implement and expatriate group medical insurance scheme. With today's international group plans only needing 2 expat lives to qualify, there is no reason at all to wait. Why start an international group insurance plan at just two expats:

1. U.S. domestic medical plans cannot work directly with foreign hospitals and doctors. Expats need to front all funds and seek reimbursement back in the home country.
2. Expat group medical plans can accommodate non-U.S. expatriates called Third Country National Employees. In some cases, they can add local nationals. No U.S. medical plan can do this.
3. Expatriate group plans begin at just two employees.
4. These plans add other lines of coverage important to international assignees: international dental insurance, international group life insurance, international group disability, medical evacuation. For example, group life and LTD cannot be purchased for just a few expatriates on their own.
5. The cost of expat group insurance is really no more than what you are paying now, or budgeting for now under the U.S. program.
6. It can save a tremendous amount of time and aggravation on both the global expat and the home office benefit staff having to fix problems.

If plans are available at two employees working abroad, there is no more any reason to wait.

Expatriate Insurance and HIPAA

If an expatriate searches the web, there may be hundreds of different providers for individual international medical insurance and small group expatriate health insurance programs. Buyer beware, many of these plans are not considered HIPAA plans and are not HIPAA compliant.

What exactly does this mean? It means that employees and individual expatriates working abroad as international assignees that are under a foreign international health insurance scheme like BUPA international for example, may have a problem when returning to the U.S. if the program was not HIPAA compliant.

If an expatriate developed a pre-existing condition during the expatriate assignment, they may find they have no coverage when they return to the U.S. because health insurers can impose pre-existing condition limitations on those attempting to enroll in U.S. plans coming from plans that are not HIPAA compliant. Foreign plans and offshore insurance plans are not HIPAA plans.

Employers using non-HIPAA plans to cover U.S. expatriates are taking a big risk. Employees that return to the U.S. and are shocked to learn they cannot find healthcare that will cover the pre-existing condition will file a lawsuit against the employer.