Employee benefit healthcare should be included with other loss prevention programmes in captives, according to speakers at the European Captive Forum in Luxembourg yesterday.
One panellist, Andrew Bradley, head of group risk services at Nestlé, pointed to a need to change the mindset in the captive industry. Considering employee benefit healthcare alongside other loss preventions could create more diversification in the captive, increase the number of stakeholders, and improve the image of the insurance industry as a whole, he said.
Bradley added that captives have a role to play in corporate social responsibility and the wellbeing of employees, however, he noted that “wellness means different things to different people”, saying that these programmes would have to differ country-by-country.
Another speaker, Vittorio Zaniboni, director of business transformation at Generali Employee Benefits, suggested that a large number of deaths worldwide can be attributed to the same drivers, many of which could be connected to lifestyle choices.
An aging population, increased use of medical services and expensive advances in medicine mean the costs of healthcare are increasing 5 percent faster than general inflation, and in reaction to this, organisations are turning their attention to employee wellness “in all its possible forms”.
According to Zaniboni, this is a new paradigm in which organisations have to consider the role of the insurance provider, and how a captive can add value.
Captives “can create value in many different aspects”, Zaniboni said, as they can influence local entities in raising awareness about what they can, and should, do to be more proactive.
Captives could also forge partnerships with human resources departments, leveraging contacts to show how wellness initiatives could help organisations gain and retain staff.
They can also leverage “bargaining power”, pushing for more creative insurance solutions and tailor-made products. According to Zaniboni, captives have a responsibility to make good use of their purchasing power to encourage the market to innovate.
He added that captives can themselves be more creative, as they are not influenced by the same market forces and challenges that commercial insurers face.
Addressing the return on investment in wellness programmes, Zaniboni noted that this is difficult to pin down or quantify, and that any financial return will be long-term. He suggested that the paradigm should change “from the concept of return-on-investment to the concept of value on investment”—and that this value can be seen in employee wellbeing.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to quantify in monetary terms, but there is a value on a number of other parameters,” he said.
“Big corporations will not be able to afford anymore not to worry about these things, and captives can definitely play a very big and crucial role in this journey.”
