From multinational corporations deploying employees on long-term assignments, to digital nomads and remote teams, the movement of people across borders is a fundamental aspect of modern business and life – and one that global mobility professionals expect to remain stable or increase in its various forms through the remainder of the year.
International private medical insurance (IPMI) has long been an important part of supporting the global mobility strategies of businesses and the people who work there.
And while coverage itself is still the centrepiece, it is no longer the single factor in consumer choice. Boosting the customer experience in insurance takes ingenuity.
Companies and individuals navigating international relocation often have limited but critical interactions with their insurance providers – often at only difficult times – and that means every one of those touchpoints has to be solid.
Benefits of providing a scalable, local payment experience
One of the best and first places they can cement strong relationships is overlooked: delivering localised, frustration-free payment experiences.
One of the first roadblocks to onboarding and renewal is the point of premium payment – often the customer’s leading reason for looking for a new provider.
International customers often want to price and pay for their global policies using their familiar home currency and preferred payment method, in a secure way.
Insurers typically fall into two camps in trying to accommodate this: they will either limit payment options such as only accept wire transfers or, more commonly, patch together different payment providers for different countries, requiring them to manage multiple bank accounts.
Creating complexity and additional work
This creates more complexity for the customer and the business.
For example:
- A client tries to pay their premium with their local credit card, either to find it is not accepted or fees associated with its use are unclear.
- Staff have to take on more manual work, tracking and matching payments coming in via bank wire, or fielding questions from customers that they may not have good answers to.
If you are questioning whether this is a problem at your organization, consider how many negative replies you get when asking:
- Can clients see how much they owe in their local currency, inclusive of exchange and associated fees?
- Can they select a local means of making a payment, including a credit card or an alternative payment method?
- Are incoming payments automatically matched and reconciled to outstanding invoices?
- If there is a problem with the payment, can they access local support in their language and time zone?
Can you ensure high levels of payment security and compliance?
If there were far too many ‘no’ in that quiz, you’ll soon be faced with another issue: ensuring high levels of security and compliance at scale.
Without the right partner, having an easy digital experience can often be at odds with ensuring high levels of security and compliance with the latest standards and regulations.
Layers of protection, such as multi-factor authentication or robust know your customer processes, work to protect the business and the payers, and when managed by a single partner, are up-to-date and frustration-free for the end-user.
What’s more, managing multiple payment partners also puts the onus on your business to keep up to date with the fast-shifting global regulatory environment. The best partners will alert you to shifts and proactively deliver the updates to address them.
Managing uncertainty comes down to building relationships that help your business remain agile.
Download Health & Protection’s New York IPMI roundtable supplement by following this link.