The International Employee Benefits Association Conference gathered this year about 150 delegates from industry, consultancies and insurance providers to discuss latest trends in the international employee benefits landscape.
Key debate areas of this edition included the role of benefits and rewards to drive corporate change; the impact of terrorism on employees’ safety; latest developments across geographies; integrating local diversity in global plans; and strategies for the middle market.
The conference was opened by Mr Marco Giacomelli, Head of Generali Global Health and Chairman of IEBA, and included a rich programme of expert Case Studies to shed light on best practices in the market.
Several sessions looked at the historic evolution of employee benefits solutions for multinationals, drawing key lessons from the past and outlining what the future will look like. Generali Employee Benefits Network made the case for the relevance and continuing value of Global Underwriting as an alternative to traditional Employee Benefits funding.
“We are registering an increasing interest in the market for this approach. It is rightly perceived as an innovative and effective solution”, says Sven Roelandt, GEB Regional Manager for Western Europe. “We want to illustrate to attendees why GEB, through its structure based on reinsurance, is one of the very few players in the market able to actually execute this solution and deliver its benefits in terms of premium optimisation, improved local terms and conditions and enhanced governance”.
The issues of global governance and of integrating local regulations in effective benefits design were further explored in deep-dive break-out sessions. A look across geographies, from US, Asia and Europe, highlighted the need to bridge different cultures, while a representative from the National Bank of Belgium intervened on one of the most urgent issues for Europe, its public pension system.
GEB treated the conference participants to a gala dinner that took place at Château Saint-Anne, one of the networking opportunities provided by the conference along its rich educational programme. We thank you for the interesting exchanges over this two-day event, and look forward to meeting you again next year.