Romania: Employee Benefits Update

September 12, 2016:

The following changes in employee benefits have been reported back by Asinta’s partner in Romania, MAI CEE:

Legal/Legislative Changes:

The most recent changes in the local law (Law 227/2015) show an increased care for creating more employer advantages to encourage them to offer better benefits packages to their employees. The new law sets up a higher tax exemption threshold for the costs of private health insurance. This new threshold, which is up to 400€ per person/per year from 250€, is applicable to both employer and employee and is expected to boost the sales of health insurance in Romania.

Market Trends:

The tendency of the employee benefits market is ascendant and the most recent changes have had a serious impact on this trend. The war between private and public health insurance seems to be slowly but surely going in the direction of private health insurance. This is due in part to the fact that public health insurance is not as of yet subject to any fiscal advantage and of course optimization of costs to the corporate sector is a very important factor when consider health insurance packages.

Not all companies from Romania offer supplemental health insurance benefits to their employees. While about 70% still prefer to buy public insurance, only about 30% buy private insurance, currently. This is expected to change in the future, as explained above.

The coverage provided at most of the companies is quite conservative and mostly focuses on outpatient medical services, while the additional coverage such as inpatient, dental, vision,pregnancy, etc. are of interest for a few industries only (such as IT, oil and gas). About 30% of the companies offer their employees group life insurance, or personal accident insurance, as complementary benefits packages attached to private health insurance benefits. In most cases, both types of insurance benefits are subsidized by the company, but this rule does not apply to family members anymore.