WBN Launches Duty of Care Zone

The latest new thinking from WBN for you;

Worldwide Broker Network (WBN) has launched its Duty of Care Zone, a dedicated resource designed to help multinational organizations build coordinated, gap-free strategies to ensure globally mobile workforces are supported and compliant. 

The launch comes as business travel and flexible working volumes surge back to and beyond pre-pandemic levels in a new, complex world, reshaping the landscape for risk, HR and EB managers worldwide. According to the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) 2026 Outlook, optimism among business travel professionals has risen to 43%, but the nature of travel itself has changed fundamentally, creating new complexities for employers and brokers alike.

In WBN’s The New Risk Reality Report, 47% of business leaders think of regulation and compliance pressure or workforce disruption as their most pressing risk and insurance concern.

Within this ever-changing reality, a new risk landscape is emerging. Companies are travelling more, employees are exercising more personal choice, and the boundaries between corporate and personal exposure are increasingly blurred. Employee benefits and risk managers are being asked to manage a fragmented process without always having the infrastructure to do so.

“We have watched business travel and expatriate care transform rapidly, and with it, the risks facing globally mobile employees and their employers. Coverage that worked two years ago may now leave people and businesses dangerously exposed,” said Liz Yovich Pan, Director of Employee Benefits at WBN, the world’s largest independent insurance broking and employee benefits network. “Brokers are being asked increasingly complex questions by clients with globally mobile populations, blending work and leisure, and making individual choices about how they travel. The Duty of Care Zone offers consultative tools to turn those conversations into strategy quickly, clearly, and with confidence.”

Designed in direct response to this evolving landscape, WBN’s Duty of Care Zone provides employers and their broker/consulting partners with a bespoke, structured framework to identify, close, and manage risks for mobile workers. When mobile employees cross borders or change assignments, benefits, wellbeing solutions, compensation programs, and local compliance regulations won’t travel with them. Coverage gaps expose both the individual and the business to employment, legal, tax, and people risks that can be difficult and expensive to remediate after the fact.

The Duty of Care Zone is built around four core components:

1. Duty of Care Consulting: a consultancy service that multinationals can use to help them align how they take care of their employees and their employees’ families who may be mobile around the world. Clients can pay a fee to access the Duty of Care Workbook (see below) and run through it themselves to identify gaps, overlaps, and find the best global solution. Or they can hire WBN’s consultants to manage the process for them.
2. Duty of Care Workbook: A practical, proprietary tool enabling HR and risk leaders, as well as brokers to map current coverage against global workforce movements, surface gaps and duplications instantly, and build a consolidated strategy that travels with employees wherever they go.
3. Product Access: Curated access to the specific and bespoke products clients may need to address identified risks, matched precisely to their global footprint and workforce profile.
4. Culture of Care Training: Structured training resources to embed duty of care thinking across HR and management teams, ensuring strategy translates into consistent day-to-day practice.

Together, these give HR and risk leaders clear visibility across all risk categories and practical, efficient pathways to address them – turning what is often a reactive, fragmented process into a proactive, coordinated global strategy. Where corporate and local offices have inadvertently purchased duplicate coverage or missed local compliance laws, WBN’s Duty of Care solution surfaces these gaps and overlaps immediately, enabling budget to be appropriately allocated to maximize coverage and minimize risk to the organization.

The GBTA data validates the trends WBN are seeing first-hand:

• 43% of employees are personally paying to upgrade to individually preferred or out-of-policy travel options – with flight cabin and seat upgrades most prevalent at 78% -introducing new grey areas around duty of care obligations.
• 43% of corporate buyers now have formal policies or guidelines for blended ‘bleisure’ travel, with 71% citing improved employee satisfaction and wellbeing as the primary benefit, and 68% pointing to better work-life balance
• Despite these positives, duty of care and traveller safety (59%) and insurance coverage (46%) have emerged as the two biggest challenges organisations face when managing blended travel.