The ongoing conflict in the Middle East sorted companies into two groups: those whose Special Contingency Insurance (SCI) engaged when they needed it, and those who learned mid-event that the policy they held was designed for a different scenario altogether.
SCI, usually bundled under a kidnap, ransom and extortion placement and sometimes extended to political violence or war, is narrower than many buyers realise. Triggers are specific, exclusions are broad, and geographies may be carved out. The movement of ordinary business travellers or dependants out of a country because the business decided it was time to go is rarely what the policy language contemplates.
The distinction between the two groups was not the size of the placement. It was whether they had pressure-tested their policy language against a realistic operational scenario. Those who had not treated the purchase of cover as the transfer of risk had done little to control it in advance. They had not knowingly accepted the risk; they had assumed they had moved it. When the crisis revealed they had not, the reflex was to attempt the transfer late, to the insurer, to the appointed responder, and in some cases to us.
When the transfer did not land, the reflex was not to assume the risk but to revisit the wording. Legal reviewed policy language while procurement challenged pay terms, all while the crisis manager was trying to move a family of four through a degrading airport. The risk stayed with the employer, who paid the cost of the delay on top of the cost of the movement.
Who defines “evacuation”? The clause that matters
The central commercial question during the crisis was who decides when people leave. It sounds obvious. It is not.
Three parties typically hold an opinion, at a minimum. The client has its own triggers and duty-of-care thresholds, usually set ahead of official guidance. The insurer’s appointed responder, the consultancy designated by the underwriter to manage the incident, is responsible for cost containment and tends to align with official government advisory. The third party is the government itself, which can recommend shelter-in-place long after commercial aviation has degraded beyond viability for families.
When you have a large concentration of expatriates of multiple nationalities in a foreign company, this becomes impossible to resolve if not gamed out in advance. Whose government advice do you follow? Your host’s, your headquarters’, or the country where most of your staff hold citizenship? None of these are decisions for mid-crisis.
As the Iran war broke out and escalated, these positions diverged immediately. Clients wanted people moved fast, to destinations of their choice, because a regional business visitor cannot afford three weeks cut off from a working airport.
Appointed responders, constrained by policy wording and approved supplier networks, worked within narrower parameters: which triggers had fired, which destinations the policy would fund, which routes had been pre-vetted, etc. Airlines compounded the problem, suspending and reinstating services as the airspace dictated.
This uncertainty caused decision paralysis. “Doers” in-region were waiting on “deciders” outside it, who were themselves awaiting more information. In several cases the delay inside the client organisation was longer than the delay at the insurer.
When the client’s trigger fires before the insurer’s, the client is on their own commercially. They pay out of pocket, at premium rates, without the delegated authority and pre-vetted supply chain a properly structured SCI placement should have delivered. This deserves more attention at underwriting than it receives. Most wordings treat a precautionary, business-led departure as an edge case. In a conflict like this one, it is the base case.
Residents, travellers and dependants
The trigger question has a second half that gets less attention at placement: who the policy is written for. Most corporate insurance products are built around the business traveller on a defined trip with a return leg. Residents and dependants sit elsewhere in the insurance stack, with coverage that rarely mirrors the employee’s scope.
When conflict escalates, families leave together. That is not how most policies are built. A resident employee in the GCC with a spouse and children is making a decision about their family, not a named insured. Employers know this; most policies do not reflect it. The gap had been visible long before 28 February 2026 when the armed hostilities started. By inaction, it was a risk the employer had knowingly accepted.
In the conflict to date, we have seen three versions of the same problem. Some employers covered the employee and told the family to self-fund. Some covered the whole family out of pocket. Some stalled while internal alignment was negotiated. The cleanest outcomes sat with employers who had offered voluntary self-departure and work-from-anywhere early, or had pre-agreed dependant coverage as a fixed duty-of-care cost.
For insurers, this is a market opportunity. Family-inclusive trigger language and resident-specific wording that recognises the difference between an employee on a trip and a family living in-country are ways to differentiate an SCI placement. For brokers, the question at placement is straightforward: does the dependant’s geographic scope and coverage level sit alongside the employee’s? If not, the employer is already partially self-insuring before any conflict begins, consciously or unknowingly.
A harder market, and a clearer one
Underwriters are now reluctant to issue new conflict-related cover unless the client can show a credible risk mitigation posture. This is overdue. A client with a documented ISO 31030-aligned travel risk programme, a tested business continuity plan under ISO 22301, and a response provider that follows the client’s triggers, not the insurer’s cost mandate, is a materially different risk to one without. Insurers who can articulate that difference and price it will retain the portfolio. Those who cannot will write the risk blindly or walk away from it.
Self-insurance is not always a failure state. A client with a tested departure plan, pre-agreed supplier rates, and the governance to act before the insurer’s trigger fires is practising prepared self-insurance. The cost of that decision, taken in advance, is a fraction of the cost of the same decision taken under pressure mid-crisis.
The companies that suffered worst in the current conflict were the ones who had done little in advance. They tried to transfer the risk during the event, and when the transfer failed, they defaulted to inertia. The risk had never moved. The bill arrived twice: once for the movement, and once for the delay that preceded it.
What the insurance sector should take from this
Three things. First, treat trigger language and authorisation hierarchy as the single most important commercial clause in any SCI-style placement, not a boilerplate annex. Second, pressure-test appointed responder mandates so that cost containment does not override client duty-of-care. When the two are in tension, the client will override the responder, and the policy should be designed for that reality. Third, price the quality of the client’s underlying risk management, including their employee concentrations and what they have already done to make the firm resilient.
The Middle East conflict has handed the insurance sector an unusually clear case study. The companies who were insured on paper and self-insured in practice are now visible. The question is not only whether the market writes better cover next time. It is whether buyers do the work to deserve it. M
Mr Scott Wilcox is Sicuro Group’s Founder & Senior Adviser while Mr Rafal Hyps is CEO. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in the UAE, the Group delivers global risk management and duty of care solutions across more than 140 countries. It operates through three specialist practices: Sicuro Group (travel risk and security operations), Intelyse (intelligence and due diligence) and Sicuro Technology (communications and tracking).