Business travel insurance explained: What finance teams need to know

Travel insurance tends to come up at the same moment every finance team is trying to keep a trip under control: when someone asks, “What happens if this goes wrong?” A cancelled flight can create budget increases. A missing laptop can become a data and continuity issue. A medical emergency can turn into an operational problem before it is even an insurance claim.

That’s why business travel insurance is not just a nice-to-have in travel planning. It sits right at the intersection of employee duty of care, expense management, and financial compliance. If you cannot see what was booked, paid, and expensed, you cannot prove business purpose, enforce policy, or support an employee quickly when plans change.

What is business travel insurance?

Business travel insurance is cover for things that go wrong while an employee is travelling for work. It is designed to protect both the traveller and the business against the costs and disruption that can happen on a work trip.

It can be purchased as:

• Per-trip cover for individual journeys.

• Annual multi-trip cover for frequent travellers.

• A corporate policy that applies across teams, entities, or geographies (often with different cover levels depending on destination and risk).

How it differs from personal travel insurance

Personal travel insurance is built for leisure trips. Business travel insurance is built for working realities, such as:

• Company equipment and data-sensitive devices (laptops, phones, demo kit).

• Work-related changes such as meetings moved, trips cancelled due to business needs.

• A duty of care: getting someone safe, treated, and home with minimal delay.

The important nuance for finance teams is this: personal policies often have limitations around “business use”, and even when they do allow it, they rarely align with the company’s workflow for approvals, record-keeping, and reimbursement.

Do companies need travel insurance?

Often the real question is not “Do we need it?” but “What is the risk of not having it?”. Business travel creates a predictable set of financial exposures, and it also creates a people-risk that most organisations cannot responsibly ignore.

Legal and duty-of-care considerations (why finance gets involved)

Employers generally have an obligation to take reasonable steps to protect employees while they are working, and that duty follows the employee when they travel for business. Travel insurance does not replace good risk management, but it is one of the most practical ways to make sure:

• Employees can access appropriate support fast (especially abroad).

• The business can respond without hesitation (medical costs, repatriation, disruption).

• Costs are handled consistently rather than improvised in a crisis.

If your travel process allows out-of-policy booking, missing receipts, or unclear approval trails, your risk and your cost base both rise. This is where travel, finance, HR, and operations need a shared playbook.

When it is required vs recommended

In practice, business travel insurance falls into two buckets:

• Required (common situations):

  • Visa applications where proof of medical cover is mandatory.

  • Client or supplier requirements written into contracts.

  • High-risk travel where standard policies will not respond without additional cover.

• Strongly recommended (most other situations):

  • International travel, where healthcare costs and access vary hugely.

  • Domestic travel where medical cover may be less of a concern, but cancellation, delays, and equipment loss still create financial exposure.

As an enterprise finance team, the decision point is usually policy consistency. It is far easier to enforce a standard approach than to argue trip-by-trip about what counts as 'worth insuring'.

What does business travel insurance typically cover?

Policies vary, but most business travel insurance is designed to cover common, high-impact scenarios.

Medical emergencies

Typical cover includes:

• Emergency medical treatment if someone becomes ill or injured while travelling.

• Hospital costs and associated fees.

• Emergency assistance services, which can be as important as the payout itself.

Trip cancellations and delays

This is where finance teams often feel the pain fastest, because it shows up as:

• Non-refundable flights, hotels, and trains.

• Rebooking costs.

• Extra nights, meals, and local travel when plans slip.

Insurance can help recover costs, but only if the trip was booked and documented in a way that supports the claim. A business travel platform can help you efficiently track travel spending.

Lost or stolen equipment

Work trips often involve higher-value items than leisure travel. A laptop is not just a replacement cost. It can be:

• A delivery risk - lost work time, missed deadlines.

• A security risk - data exposure.

• A compliance risk - if it contains personal or financial information.

Many policies include cover for theft or loss of business equipment, but often with single-item limits and documentation requirements (such as a police report). Be sure to check your policy has the right theft cover you need.

Liability and repatriation

Depending on the policy, you may see cover for:

• Personal liability for incidents that occur during the trip.

• Medical evacuation or repatriation if an employee needs to be moved to suitable care or returned home.

This is the cover that turns an operational nightmare into a managed process, provided the organisation knows what to do and has a clear support pathway.

What is usually not covered?

The fastest way for a claim to fail is for the situation to be outside scope or poorly documented. Common exclusions include:

• Pre-existing conditions: many policies exclude these unless declared and accepted in advance.

• Non-work-related activities: leisure extensions, risky sports, or activities outside business scope may be excluded unless explicitly covered.

• Unauthorised travel: if the trip was not approved, booked outside process, or violates policy, insurers may reject claims.

• Poor documentation: missing receipts, missing proof of travel, no incident report, or unclear timelines.

For finance, these exclusions matter because they map directly to controllable process: approval workflows, booking channels, and receipt capture.

How travel insurance interacts with expenses

Insurance is often managed externally, but the financial reality lands in your expense process. The smoother your expense flow, the easier it is to support employees and recover costs.

Claimable vs reimbursable expenses

These terms get muddled quickly in a real incident:

• Reimbursable expenses: paid out of pocket by an employee and repaid by the business, for example a medical bill paid upfront.

• Claimable expenses: costs that can be recovered from an insurer, either by the employee or the business.

The cleanest approach from a duty-of-care perspective, is usually to think reimburse the employee quickly, then claim back centrally, so employees are not left waiting for an insurer to settle.

What finance teams need to track

At minimum, you want visibility on:

• Trip authorisation: (who approved, what budget, what purpose).

• Booking details: dates, destinations, suppliers.

• Payment method: company card, virtual card, employee out-of-pocket.

• Receipts and evidence: invoices, boarding passes, incident reports.

• Claim status: submitted, pending, paid, rejected, partial payout.

This is also where fraud and error appear. The classic risk is 'double dipping': the same cost being reimbursed internally and claimed externally.

Where expense management tools fit

Modern spend management tools help finance teams keep travel spending predictable and auditable by:

• Enforcing approval workflows before money is spent.

• Controlling payment via cards with limits and rules.

• Capturing receipts as they happen, so evidence is not lost.

• Keeping an auditable trail that supports both internal review and external claims.

Common scenarios finance teams encounter

Most of the complexity is not in the policy. It is in the workflow.

Medical costs paid upfront by employees

An employee may have to pay for treatment on the spot, especially if they are in a clinic that requires immediate payment. In these moments, finance teams are often forced to decide whether to reimburse the employee immediately or wait for the insurer to settle the claim. This decision involves weighing the need to support the employee against the risk of needing specific evidence later to avoid a claim rejection. To prevent employees from having to make difficult financial decisions under stress, the best practice is to define these reimbursement rules clearly in your travel policy before the trip begins.

Insurance claims requiring receipts (and other evidence)

Insurers are notoriously strict about documentation and often require much more than a single receipt to process a claim. Beyond simple proof of payment, finance teams usually need to provide proof of travel dates, confirmation of the payment method used, and, in the case of theft or medical issues, official police reports or medical documentation. If these receipts and documents are scattered across various inboxes, messaging apps, or personal phones, the claims process becomes significantly slower and the risk of a rejected claim increases.

Reimbursements after emergencies

Following a travel incident, finance teams often encounter a complex mix of split payments involving both corporate and personal funds, multiple currencies, and the risk of duplicate submissions. There is also frequent confusion regarding whether the insurer should pay the employee directly or reimburse the company. Implementing a simple “insurance claim pending” workflow tag within your expense software, combined with a central claim log, can eliminate most of this operational friction and ensure that every emergency-related cost is tracked through to completion.

Best practices for finance and operations teams

Business travel insurance works best when it is treated as part of a wider travel finance system.

Build a clear, enforceable travel policy

Your policy should clearly answer:

• Who is covered, and when coverage starts and ends.

• Which booking channels and payment methods are required.

• What “authorised travel” means in practice.

• How personal extensions (“bleisure”) are handled.

• What employees should do in an emergency, including who to contact.

Standardise documentation requirements

Make evidence capture routine rather than reactive:

• Require receipts for all travel spend, even if “it should be insured”.

• Define what counts as acceptable proof for common scenarios (theft, delays, medical treatment).

• Set deadlines for submission, while being realistic after emergencies.

Align insurance, booking, and expense workflows

The best operational setup is one where:

• Travel cannot be booked without approval.

• Payments are trackable to a person and a purpose.

• Receipts are captured at point of spend.

• Claimable incidents are flagged early, not discovered during month-end close.

That alignment is what turns insurance from a PDF in a folder into a real duty-of-care and cost-control mechanism.

Summary: Treat travel insurance as part of responsible travel management

For finance teams, business travel insurance is not just about recovering costs. It’s about reducing disruption, protecting employees, and keeping spend auditable when things go wrong.

Even if your insurance is managed externally, visibility and documentation still sit with finance. When you can see how trips are booked, paid, and expensed, you can enforce policy, support employees quickly, and avoid avoidable claim failures.

If you’re reviewing your travel process this quarter, start with the basics: clear policy, consistent booking, and reliable receipt capture. Then build toward the bigger goal: end-to-end control over business travel spend, without slowing the business down. Explore Spendesk’s approach to travel spending control and visibility.