GROUP INSURANCE - ORGANIZATIONS

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This page contains dozens of short articles that will help you quickly understand international insurance. For example, terminology, purchasing details and managing your insurance coverage are topics that are all covered within these articles. Choose an Article From the Topics Below

GROUP HEALTH COVERAGE FOR A “SMALL” ORGANIZATION

Often volunteer groups have a hard time setting up international group health insurance. This is usually due to the lack of finances (often individual members raise their own funds) and also the democratic nature of volunteer groups. One of the best and easiest solutions to this problem is to establish international group health coverage when the volunteer group is started. We have helped several volunteer organizations start their group coverage with a group of only two people. All new people who join the organization are then aware from the beginning that they will need to raise funds to pay for their group health insurance when they join the organization. All new workers are required to join the group coverage. Thus the group does not face a problem years later of trying to get the whole group to embrace group health insurance.

We have one company we work with that will insure a group of two and several that will insure a group of three. If your organization is small and you want to get started with international group insurance, please contact us.

TO CONTROL CLAIMS GET GROUP INSURANCE WITH COMPANIES THAT "POOL" SMALL GROUPS

There are two ways international health insurance companies handle claims for small groups (a small group is generally defined as from 2 to not more than 50 employees). Some companies “pool” their small groups. When this is done, claims that come in on one of the groups are spread over the whole “pool” of groups. Thus a non-profit of three workers would be in a pool with 40 other non-profits; therefore, their claims would be spread over the 40 non-profits. The total employees in the pool might be 300 or 400. Obviously, a pool of groups like this helps keep rate increases reasonable if there is a major claim.

If the insurance company you are working with does not pool small groups, then that group will generally receive enormous rate increases if claims happen to be high on a given year. For example, if your non-profit consists of ten overseas workers, and you have claims for one year of $100,000, the rate increase due to large claims will be borne by your non-profit alone-- that is by the ten overseas workers. We have seen premiums rated up by 45 percent on small groups like this. If that same non-profit was in a “pool” of non-profits, the rate increase might end up being 15 percent or 20 percent.

So, when buying group insurance, always ask if your non-profit will be in a pool with other small non-profits. We can help you sort out which international insurance companies have the best “pooling” system for small non-profits.