Etaoin Shrdlu

Sorry. My misunderstanding.

Often when something becomes mandatory, one loses a certain element of choice and the providers obtain an advantage. Insurance for visitors is no exception, but I think it unwise to come here on holiday or for a longer stay without either travel/medical insurance or the financial resources to address an expensive stay in hospital. Travel insurance for visitors and health insurance for those staying longer is not a rip-off, although it can get expensive and one needs to choose wisely. In an ironic twist, it is actually the Thai insurers that so many like to bash that offer a product that does cover hospital costs when one is required by Thai health authorities to be hospitalized when asymptomatic. I have yet to hear of a non-Thai insurer offering this cover, but I will concede that it is possible that some do.

Almost all off-the-shelf travel insurance policies stipulate that cover be taken out prior to commencement of travel. This holds true for both Thai and foreign insurers. I think your options for travel insurance are few, if any. I'm not aware of any Thai insurers offering medical insurance for less than one year.

Mods, please delete. Duplicate.

I was in your situation roughly 25 years ago. I insisted I was too old to have kids, but I had a clever plan, and it worked! She stopped wanting more children after our fourth.

Most foreign insurers don't cover hospital expenses when they are not medically necessary, but I think that some of the products offered by Thai insurers for inbound travelers do

The application form is not difficult to fill out. I assisted my wife in completing hers and it did not take very long. You might want to take a look at it before you spend upwards of 10,000 baht for someone else to do it.

Quite. I would also like to know whether there were any external influences brought to bear on the decision. Personal accident policies with a "hospital cash" benefit have been around for a long time, but the payout of 100,000 baht for a positive test is very high. Something like 1,000 baht per day for each day of mandatory quarantine would have been better aligned with this market. Something does not seem right.

According to this website, only nationals of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar can legally work as domestic help in Thailand. https://nitipornpna.com/blog/is-your-domestic-worker-legal But as with many things here, there may be a work-around.

My Thai/US children show both passports at the check-in counter and the check-in person appears to enter information from both into the computer. I think this info goes to both Thai and US immigration authorities. Thai passport is used to exit and enter Thailand and US passport to enter and leave the US. Once Thai immigration asked to see one of my children's US passport to make sure that she had the right to enter the US as she was exiting Thailand. Usually this does not happen, but it can.

One of the most important factors that the interviewer will want to understand, but which isn't mentioned in any of the documents your wife will need to submit, is whether you have sufficiently strong ties to Thailand to overcome the suspicion that once you both get to the US you will stay. Things that work in your favor include having a job and work permit or other proof that your ties to Thailand are strong and continuing. The interviewer may ask to see your passport to determine your visa status and how long you've been living here, so make sure she brings it with her to the interview. When my wife successfully applied for a visa a few years ago, the interviewer showed little interest in my wife's documents, but asked about my status in Thailand, how long I had been here, whether I was working and for whom I worked. No questions about my wife's employment, assets or the like. Apologies if you are already aware of this.

That seems unusual. I have access to my SCB account online through the web browsers on my computer. I download SCB's monthly statements and keep them in cloud storage (encrypted with Boxcryptor) for use in tracking balances for FBAR reporting. I can only see or download the most recent six months' statements, so I make sure to download them before they no longer appear. I do the same with Bangkok Bank, although unlike SCB I can download six months' worth of transactions in one go with BBL. Citibank keeps several years' statements available, but unfortunately Citibank is in the process of selling their business to Krungsri.

I would direct him/her to the toilet in the unused maid's room that is accessible only from outside the house.

Yes, that would support the position that this is was a bad business decision that was widely taken within the industry and possibly defend against a D&O suit. I'm also thinking about the fact that the OIC approved the cover being used as a defense as well. Another issue I've not been able to figure out is why the OIC would prohibit the insurers from cancelling mid-term if their policies' terms and conditions had cancellation clauses that allowed them to do so. I heard that some insurers sought to cancel based upon material change in risk, but the OIC kicked that back by saying they could only do so if something about the policyholder had changed, not that the over-all risk presented by the pandemic had. Perhaps these policies don't allow for cancellation by the insurer, but that's not typical. Or there may be other elements in play.

From what I've been able to put together, I haven't been able to see any way in which this rises to the level of fraud. Bad business decisions, yes, but it is difficult to hold directors and officer liable for simply making a bad business decision, although this one appears to be at the extreme end of the spectrum. It becomes another matter if any of the directors or officers failed to follow procedures in getting necessary approvals when taking a decision or if they did something outside the scope of their authority or had a specific lapse in their duty to advise or inform or otherwise discharge their duty. We may or may not see this play out in the public sphere.

Directors and officers of a company can be held personally liable for their errors and omissions in civil suits, but employees who do not make significant decisions and have little autonomy are seldom held personally liable for the actions they perform within the scope of their jobs, so it is difficult to hold a rank and file employee liable for damages. Actions with intent to harm the company or criminal activities are another matter. The Enron executives that went to jail were convicted of fraud. I don't think the current Covid insurance crisis involves fraud, but instead involves extremely poor business decisions and underwriting, perhaps as a result of breaches of oversight duty on the part of the company's directors and officers. It may or may not result in directors' and officers' liability suits against these individuals. Nobody at Arthur Andersen went to jail. The company's conviction for obstruction of justice was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005, but by that time the damage was done and AA was gone.

You're right. The OIC does maintain a fund to address insurer insolvency. Part of the problem is that this fund is nowhere near adequate to address the scope of the current problem. In all countries the taxpayers are the insurers of last resort. In the US, which has a heavily regulated insurance market, albeit by each of the 50 states, it was not enough to keep AIG from having to be bailed out by the taxpayer during the 2008 financial crisis. AIG was not bailed out because anyone felt sorry for AIG's shareholders or that AIG did not deserve to go under, but AIG's policies were essential to keeping vehicles on the roads, airplanes in the air, workers on the job, hospitals running, banks open and much more. The US government decided the potential damage to the economy and public was so great that they absolutely had to bail AIG out in order to avoid a widespread calamity. AIG shareholders did not fare well under the bailout and the company is now a much less robust entity than it was before the crisis.

Insurers will often not provide higher amounts of insurance than the perceived economic value of the policyholder in order to avoid the moral hazard (the intention to create a loss in order to claim). You can guess the motivation of a person who earns 15,000 baht a month and has the commensurate lifestyle and modest financial obligations seeking to take out several million baht in cover. I suspect the current crisis brought on by the Covid policies is prompting greater scrutiny than in the past.

I don't think there is much to worry about with AXA Thailand. I don't think AXA offered the personal accident policies that are at the heart of this problem and I suspect AXA Thailand has done proper risk assessment and made reinsurance arrangements as necessary for its risks. Local AXA management is probably sound and under the eye of the parent. But a discussion of international insurers' operations in Thailand is worthwhile. Most international insurers have locally incorporated subsidiaries or joint ventures in Thailand. This means that a policyholder would only have recourse against the balance sheet of the local subsidiary. If the local subsidiary went bust, the parent company would have no obligation to step in and make good on locally issued policies. Some international insurers, when asked about the security rating of their local operations, attempt to confuse the issue by citing the Standard & Poors rating of the parent company, which has little bearing on the claims-paying ability of the subsidiary. International insurers won't provide any kind of parental guarantee or cut-through clauses in their policies. This tells me they would be prepared to walk away from a steaming hole in the ground if they were presented with a big enough one. But in spite of this, a policyholder is probably better off holding a policy issued by the local operation of an international insurer than having a policy issued by some of the Thai insurers.

That's right. The insurers made the decision to market these policies without properly assessing or understanding the risks involved. They were extremely negligent in this regard and indeed bankruptcy is looming for some of them and is appropriate. The trick is to minimize the impact on the public in the face of their inability to pay claims. The OIC and the government have some work to do.

It isn't the mandatory Covid policies sold to tourists and returning expats that is at the center of the problem. It is the personal accident policies that paid a cash benefit on testing positive for Covid that were purchased in the millions by Thais that is causing this crisis.

Asia Insurance 1950 PLC stopped issuing non-life insurance policies back in September under the direction of the OIC, laid off staff and was said to be cutting expenses so as to have more funds available for claims payments. I am not sure whether this action is attributable to Covid policies. Asia Insurance's license was not withdrawn at the time. On December 15th, the OIC withdrew the license of The One Insurance and placed it under the non-life insurance fund's liquidation procedures. The One used to be known as Assets Insurance back in the day. I heard a bit ago that there were initially 16 Thai insurers that petitioned the OIC for relief from their Covid policy obligations or that there were 16 with threateningly large Covid payments looming. I am not sure how accurate this was then or if the number has grown in the meantime. I don't have the names.

I agree. But now we're talking about regulating the medical community, too, and that makes the issue even more difficult.

Commercial insurance is a poor solution for spreading the risk of high healthcare costs unless insurers are barred from excluding pre-existing conditions, congenital conditions and others, in which case the premiums rise to levels that become unaffordable for many. Universal coverage provided by the state or by a single payer under strict regulations would be preferable, but would still be costly. Any tax that was capable of addressing these costs wouldn't be small, especially if treatment in private hospitals were covered.

There probably isn't a solution that doesn't involve either the OIC allowing the insurers to avoid some of their potential obligations under the policies in question or a bailout of some sort, or both. Perhaps consolidation of all of the problematic personal accident policies under one government-supervised "bad insurer" with a limit of one payout per person would be a start. Many Thai insurers have small capital bases and rely heavily upon reinsurance, which for this risk they do not have. I think this problem looks like a triumph of their marketing departments over their underwriters, or simply a complete failure of their underwriters to recognize and assess the risk. I think it is also a failure of the OIC in allowing insurers to provide cash payouts for positive Covid tests.