Insurance Insights : The role of Global Employee Benefits

Ludovic Bayard is the CEO of Generali Employee Benefits (GEB), a global platform – leveraging

130+ Insurance network partners – focused on the coordination of Group employee benefit programs for multinational companies. With over 25 years of experience within the Generali Group, he has developed expertise in the international insurance landscape through diverse management roles in 5 countries.

Understanding Employee Benefits

Employee benefits are a key component of the overall compensation package that companies offer to their workforce. These benefits are designed to provide financial protection, promote well-being, and support employees through various life events. While the specific offerings and benefit designs may vary by country and by employer, the core product lines typically include:

These benefits serve multiple purposes. For employees, they offer peace of mind and financial security. For employers, they are a strategic tool to attract and retain talent, support employee engagement, and manage workforce-related risks. As expectations around well- being and work-life balance evolve, many companies are also expanding their offerings to include wellness programs, flexible benefits, and financial education tools.

The Role of Global Employee Benefits Networks

For international employers, managing employee benefits across multiple countries presents a unique challenge. Benefit programs are typically arranged at the local level with a Group contract between a local subsidiary and a local insurer to cover local employees. These arrangements are governed by national regulations, tax and labor laws, and market practices, which vary significantly from one country to another.

This fragmentation makes it difficult for multinational companies to maintain oversight, ensure consistency, and manage costs effectively across their global workforce.

Global employee benefits networks, such as ours, help international employers address this challenge. Their core value lies in managing these decentralized and locally governed benefit programs in a more holistic and coordinated manner.

The various global networks operate through a global ecosystem of local insurance partners. For example, GEB is present in over 120 countries and collaborates with more than 130 local insurers. This structure enables multinational employers to centralize the negotiation, administration, and oversight of their employee benefits, while still ensuring compliance with local requirements.

By consolidating these relationships, global networks help employers unlock several advantages: strong corporate governance through access to data & reporting, improved pricing through aggregated purchasing power, enhanced risk management via centralized oversight, and better quality and consistency in benefit delivery across regions.

Solutions Offered by Global Networks

To support this centralized approach, global networks offer a range of financial and structural solutions, such as:

•   Multinational Pooling: this model aggregates local insurance contracts into a single international account. It allows companies to benefit from risk diversification and potentially receive international dividends based on the overall performance of the global or self-standing pool.

•   Captive Reinsurance: large corporations may choose to take the risk and reinsure certain employee benefit risks through their own captive insurance entities. This gives them greater control over plan design, risk retention, and financial outcomes.

What Differentiates the Networks

The competitive strength of a global employee benefit network depends on several key factors:

•   Quality and Reach of Local Partners: The ability to match an international employer’s footprint with best-in-class local insurers is critical. Strong local partnerships ensure that benefits are delivered effectively and in compliance with local standards.

•   Data Management and Reporting: Managing vast amounts of employee benefits data from multiple countries is a major challenge. Leading networks invest in advanced systems to collect, process, and transform this data into actionable insights for employers.

•   Technical Expertise: In-house actuarial and risk management capabilities are essential. These allow networks to support employers in designing and optimizing their global benefits strategy, aligning it with broader corporate risk and HR objectives.

Trends and upcoming developments

As the global workforce evolves, employee benefits are no longer just a cost to be managed by multinationals but a strategic lever for attraction, retention, and engagement. For insurers, this shift creates both challenges and opportunities.

Rising medical inflation and the surge in high-cost treatments are forcing a rethink of the traditional pooling and reinsurance to captive models, while clients increasingly demand solutions that go beyond pure risk transfer. The next frontier lies in personalization, flexibility,  and  digital  enablement:  benefits  ecosystems  that  adapt  to  multi-generational needs, integrate a strong focus on wellness and prevention, and use global data and AI to deliver truly relevant experiences to employees and employers.

Leading global networks such as ours are at the forefront of this transformation and now have partners  with  cutting-edge AI platforms to deliver centralized,  analytics-driven benefits management. This push towards digital integration reflects a larger trend: employee benefits providers are embracing data analytics, prevention, and proactivity to extend their role from passive (re)insurers to strategic partners.

Across multinationals we partnered with, a few illustrative cases bring these strategic shifts to life.

One global industrial firm operating in over 80 countries recently moved to standardize its minimum global benefit package, covering life, disability, and income protections through our local partners. This is to allow for attractive packages for employees worldwide, ensuring broad consistency while allowing for local tailoring where needed.

Meanwhile, a major multinational in consumer goods leveraged our captive solutions to consolidate its risk. By smoothing out cost volatility, this allowed them to reinvest these savings into wellness stipends and family-friendly benefits, reflecting the shift from reactive claims to proactive prevention and support.

Insight from the Expert

If I could offer one piece of advice to those wishing to specialize in global employee benefits, it would this: cultivate a truly international mindset. This industry sits at the crossroads of insurance, HR strategy, and global mobility. Success depends on your ability to balance financial acumen with empathy for diverse employee needs across cultures. Be curious about technology and data, because the future of benefits will be driven by this. Above all, Employee Benefits remains a “people business” so never lose sight of the human purpose behind our work: helping organizations to protect and empower their people worldwide.