Corporate Travel and Personal Accident Insurance

Personal accident insurance is designed to respond when someone suffers an injury that causes death, disablement or a loss of income, where that person sits outside the workers compensation scheme. Working directors, self-employed contractors, volunteers and committee members are the usual examples.

Corporate travel insurance is a separate but related cover. It responds to the costs that arise when employees travel for work, commonly overseas medical expenses, emergency evacuation, trip cancellation and curtailment, baggage and equipment, and personal liability while travelling.

Annex Risk Advisory is a Perth commercial insurance brokerage. As a broker arranging personal accident insurance and corporate travel cover, we help businesses work out who is genuinely covered elsewhere and who is not, review the benefit structures and wordings they hold, and explore options from a range of insurance markets.

Neither cover is a substitute for workers compensation. Where a person meets the definition of a worker, the statutory scheme applies and personal accident sits alongside it rather than in place of it.

Both covers are commonly arranged together, because the people who fall outside the statutory scheme are frequently the same people travelling for work.

What a policy responds to varies between insurers. Benefit periods, waiting periods, the percentage of income replaced, age limits and the definition of disablement all differ.

The gap this cover fills is people the workers compensation scheme does not reach. That commonly means working directors who have not elected to be covered, genuine independent contractors operating in their own right, volunteers, and board or committee members of not-for-profits and incorporated associations.

It is equally relevant to sole traders and small partnerships, where an injury outside work hours can stop the business trading just as effectively as one on site. Personal accident cover is not generally restricted to work hours, which is the practical difference from the statutory scheme.

Corporate travel exposure sits with any business sending people away for work. That includes mining and resources businesses moving crews to remote sites, energy and renewables contractors working across regions, and professional services firms travelling to clients interstate and overseas. Domestic travel is often included alongside international, which matters in a state the size of Western Australia.

Sporting clubs, industry associations and community organisations sit in the same position. Their office holders and helpers are rarely workers in the statutory sense, and an injury sustained while acting for the organisation can otherwise fall to the individual.

Contracts and boards sometimes drive the requirement. Some principal agreements ask for personal accident cover for contractors on site, and not-for-profit boards frequently expect volunteer cover to be in place.

Where a contract sets those requirements, the policy needs to be read against the agreement rather than assumed to comply.

Annex takes a risk-first approach. Before approaching any insurer, we work to understand who is engaged and on what basis, which of those people fall inside the workers compensation scheme and which do not, where they work and travel, and what any contracts or constitutions require.

That mapping is the substance of the work on this class. The common failure is not a bad policy, it is an assumption that everyone is covered somewhere, when a working director, a contractor or a volunteer has quietly fallen between two arrangements.

From there we assist with insurance program design and placement, comparing options across a range of insurance markets and looking at benefit levels and periods, waiting periods, the definition of disablement, age limits, and what is excluded, alongside premium.

We can also review the insurance obligations in principal agreements, contractor engagements and constitutions to consider whether existing personal accident insurance aligns with them.

Where corporate travel is arranged, we also look at how the assistance service is accessed and what the policy expects a traveller to do first, since that is usually the part nobody reads until it is needed.

If a claim arises, claims management and advocacy is part of the service. Injury and travel claims are documentation heavy, and medical evidence and income substantiation usually determine how they are assessed. We assist with lodgement and advocate for assessment under the terms of the policy.

Both directors are active practitioners, so clients deal directly with senior brokers rather than a rotating account team. Cover is subject to insurer approval, policy terms, conditions and exclusions. Annex Risk Advisory is a signatory to the NIBA Insurance Brokers Code of Practice, and our Financial Services Guide and Terms of Engagement are available online.