Wednesday 20 / November / 2024
Muscat: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Oman need better health insurance cover options in order to attract the best staff, employers say.
Currently, insurance companies in Oman do not provide firms with less than 10 employees health insurance cover as it is not considered profitable to the insurer.
That leaves small business owners facing the dilemma of opting out of health cover for staff or selecting individual packages – at greater cost.
Some have even banded together to meet an insurer’s requirement that there must be a minimum of 10 employees but this can also add to premiums.
Sherry Colbourne, managing partner at Startup Oman,: “Insurance companies do not have any packages for start-ups and therefore they have to either look at giving their employees no health cover or an expensive individual cover, which can prove to be very discouraging for a start-up company.”
According to several entrepreneurs, the Omani business environment needs to become more attuned to nurturing new companies. Hashar Al Mandhari, director at the Alamri marketing company, noted that it is hard for start-ups to grow in an environment where basic regulations hinder growth. “Oman needs a better business model to allow SMEs’ development, or else it will be very hard to grow.”
Both Colbourne and Al Mandhari suggested a similar approach to overcoming this problem. They urged Riyada, the public authority for SME development, to intervene and create a large number of SMEs, which can be provided with an insurance cover under the same umbrella.
According to Philip K. Philip, chief executive officer of Muscat Insurance, there is no health insurance cover for companies with less than 10 employees.
They would be forced to go for expensive international coverage provided by just a handful of companies.
He added that insurance companies do sometimes compromise and give insurance cover when the number of employees is less than 10, provided that company has all its insurance business with the insurer.
