Aetna International sees great opportunities for the UK international PMI market. Paul Robertson talks to Nic Brown.
Brown clarified: “There could be tax implications for the person, there could be tax implications for an employer, placing people into different locations. And it is also handy being aware of some of the international legalities and compliance requirements that any employee or individual has to comply with.”
Surprisingly this is a generic proposition, independent of Aetna International’s.
“The idea is that we hear a lot about brokers wanting to learn more about IPMI and understandably, because of the growth opportunity,” said Brown.
“I think that we are probably at the forefront of ensuring that we can provide them with useable solutions that make their life easier. We want to do things in the right way, and we want to be able to offer something that can help brokers to develop their own businesses.”
When it comes to PMI a lot rests on the expectations of the end user, as opposed to the client, which is usually a business. To this end Brown believes employers are starting to understand their responsibilities with regards to placing people abroad.
“Providing a policy that provides coverage always used to be enough. I think now the quality of the care, the interaction, and more and more, the employer’s responsibility for ensuring they put the right employees in the right locations, is starting to become a trend.”
So, what would hold more potential, the individual side of IPMI or the group side? As ever, it depends, Brown said: “Employer benefits consultancies, the big ones, tend to have large scale international relationships on a large corporate perspective. We often see pockets of smaller brokerages that have got great relationships with multi-national corporations, and they are advising on large corporate IPMI solutions as well.
“But I think the first thing is to understand what your portfolio is; the global dynamics of who it is that you are talking to. Small corporates, especially with the austere times we have had in the last four or five years, are looking abroad for whether they are able to distribute products and services, not just in the UK.”
Currently the highest volume of quotations, the most volume opportunity and the greatest volume increases Aetna sees are in the small corporate space, although the opportunity in terms of income is, as always, that balance between small and large corporate. This business would therefore be mainly individual IPMI.
