Most coverage failures are discovered during incidents. Nearly all of them were discoverable beforehand. This is the review worth running before people travel.
1. Confirm the geography is not excluded
Check every country of operation against the exclusions in every policy in the stack. Not the region — the specific country. This single check catches more problems than any other.
2. Map every personnel category
List each category of person you are putting in the field: international staff, third-country nationals, local hires, consultants, volunteers, subcontractor personnel, family members if relevant. Identify what responds for each. Any category without a clear answer is a gap.
3. Test the evacuation assumption
Ask the provider directly: what can you actually arrange from this location? What is the realistic timeline? What happens if commercial aviation stops? Who decides evacuation is warranted? Are local staff included?
4. Read the evacuation triggers
Distinguish medical evacuation from political or security evacuation. Establish precisely what conditions activate each, in policy language rather than summary.
5. Check life and AD&D for war exclusions
Both organizational coverage and, where relevant, personnel's individual policies. Personal life insurance frequently contains exclusions that void in exactly these circumstances.
6. Assess K&R response, not just limits
Which crisis response firm is attached? What is their experience in these specific regions? How quickly do they mobilize? Does coverage extend to local staff and family members?
7. Verify contractual requirements are met
Match required coverages, limits, additional insured provisions, and certificate obligations against what is actually in place. For primes, verify the same down every subcontract tier.
8. Confirm the DBA position
For government contract work: is coverage in place, does it reflect all personnel categories and countries, and are certificates issued to the parties requiring them?
9. Establish incident procedure
Who is notified, in what order, on what number, available offline at the site. What is filed, by whom, within what timeframe. Site supervisors briefed rather than assumed to know.
10. Set a review trigger
Coverage aligned at deployment drifts out of alignment as scope, geography, headcount, and conditions change. Define what triggers a re-review — new country, headcount threshold, contract modification, significant security deterioration — rather than defaulting to annual renewal.
Running it
This takes a couple of hours with the policies in front of you and someone who reads them for a living. It is the least expensive risk management activity available to an organization deploying personnel, and the one most often skipped.
Download this as a PDF. Formatted with checkboxes for use with your policies in hand.
Download the Pre-Deployment Coverage Review (PDF)