Is an employer required to insure an employee on assignment abroad?

A safety obligation is not an insurance obligation

Employers have a legal duty of care towards employees on assignment abroad. The principle bears on the safety of people. It names no product, requires no particular policy number, and is not discharged by a purchase.

The distinction is not a loophole: it moves the question rather than closing it. The text that carries the obligation, its exact scope and the competent court depend on the law applicable to the employment contract — we do not comment on them here, and we cite no court decision, no article and no award. What arises everywhere in the same terms is what comes next. An employee is hospitalised far from their country of residence, on a Sunday, in a private facility that wants a guarantee before admitting them: who answers the hospital, and who settles the bill? No principle answers that. Only the policies taken out do — or their absence.

So this file does not try to state what the law demands. It describes what a company actually holds on the day the question arises, and what Maximum Insurance cover adds to it — cover that applies outside the country of residence and is subsidiary to compulsory schemes.

What has to be done before letting someone go?

Three decisions are taken before departure, and none of them can be made up afterwards.

First, read the destination's official risk level: the public record — two official advisories per country, United States and United Kingdom, dated and never averaged — is open to everyone on the alerts map. Then register the trip on the GardaWorld Travel Security portal: registration there is mandatory for risk-level 4 and 5 countries, ideally 48 hours before departure. Finally, know which policy covers the person that day, and hold a document that shows it.

Everything else — activating a trip, issuing the certificate, keeping the map of travelling teams current — belongs to the tool, not to the principle. That is the job of the Duty of Care OS, and this file will not re-list what it does. As for the notion itself, and why insuring and documenting are two acts that do not stand in for each other, both are covered in our file on duty of care.

Is a compulsory scheme enough outside the country of residence?

Answering would mean reading the conditions of the scheme concerned, and they do not belong to this site: what a compulsory scheme reimburses, in which country and on what terms, is set by that scheme alone. We publish no figure we have not read.

What we can state concerns our own contract, and comes down to two clauses that appear in the Corporate Mobility General Conditions 2026 and in the Table of Benefits, freely available on the Documents page: cover applies outside the country of residence, and it is subsidiary to compulsory schemes.

"Subsidiary" is not a hedge, it is an order of intervention: the compulsory scheme comes first, private cover steps in beyond it, within its own limits. For an employer, the practical consequence is less a matter of accounting than it sounds. Whatever the order of reimbursement, someone has to answer the facility that same evening — a different mechanism, described in the file on the direct payment guarantee.

What does subsidiary private cover change in practice?

It changes who pays, when, and what the employee has to do at the worst possible moment. Three lines are enough to see it, as they appear in the Table of Benefits of policy 20 00 479: emergency medical expenses abroad are covered up to CHF/EUR/USD 1,500,000; medical evacuation and repatriation are unlimited, worldwide; the TSM/AXA direct payment guarantee means hospital treatment is settled directly with the facility. And one number, reachable 24 hours a day: +41 22 819 44 66 — medical, security, travel.

The rest of the Table — search and rescue, private liability abroad, trip interruption, advance of funds — is set out line by line, with what remains optional, in the file on assignment insurance. Two limits are worth stating here rather than discovering later: this policy does not stand in for the employee's compulsory scheme, and it does not remove the need to check the destination's official level before approving a departure.

Do employees have to be named to be covered?

No, and that is what makes the obligation workable across a headcount that keeps moving. The company pack covers a number of employees, not a list of people: names are never requested, the certificate is issued in the company's name on payment, and employment is evidenced afterwards — payroll register, employment contract. Turnover, open roles and replacements therefore require no change to the policy. How it all works — what the company receives, what counts for a visa, what happens when someone new arrives — is covered in the file on insuring a team; the subscription route is on the company pack page.

Before sending someone on assignment

The destination's official level, the trip registration, the evidence of cover: that is the order in which the three questions arise. Corporate Mobility programme underwritten by TSM Compagnie d'Assurances, a Swiss insurer since 1921, on the AXA Assistance medical network — 40,000 accredited hospitals and providers — collective policy no 20 00 479. Distribution: WinHealth Group, Swiss broker, FINMA F01210623.