THE lack of an adequate emergency and medical system in Asia three decades ago was what prompted Arnaud Vaissie, chairman and CEO of International SOS, and his childhood friend, Pascal Rey-Herme, to establish International SOS in 1985.
Some 30 years later, many countries have made significant strides in healthcare and technology has enhanced global connectivity, but the sheer number of travellers on the move today has brought other threats and risks to the forefront, said Vaissie.
Not only are the risks of epidemics more prevalent with accelerated international travel, the threat of terrorism is no longer “endemic” to any particular country or geography, as incidents from Bangkok to Bali to Paris have shown, he added.
Underscoring crisis prevention and management is hence the need for preparedness, a point that corporations are increasingly cognisant of with growing awareness of their duty of care. No longer lagging behind their western counterparts, more Asian companies are also investing in planning and reaping the benefits in return, Vaissie shared.
While technology has enabled International SOS to track and offer real-time information for their clients, the complexity and dynamics of the modern travel world today have made it even more paramount for the company to helm its expertise to provide “adapted” and “localized” advice for its clients.
Vaissie speaks to Xinyi Liang-Pholsena about mitigating travel risks and coping with crises in this Newsmaker interview:
You started International SOS 30 years ago with your childhood friend. What led you to launch the company in Asia?
At the time, Pascal, the co-founder of International SOS, was sent to Indonesia as the medical attaché of the French Embassy. After two years in Indonesia, he realised there was a real need for a medical system (straddling) private practice and (public) hospitals, which was also lacking throughout Asia at the time, so the ideal was to create a system that would fill this void and help employees around the world to have access to preventive care, emergency care, evacuation and transportation care.
How has the travel risk sector evolved since?
What has happened over the past 30 years is that globalisation and international travel have exploded. FDI has increased faster than GDP growth every single year and international travel by both business travel and tourism have multiplied – just look at the impact of Chinese tourism around the world. The risks have really changed in nature because of the enormous number of travellers, the huge number of people who are mobile and the fact that people go to any kind of location.
Today, one in eight in every company is travelling internationally, so travel has become mass market and this proportion is increasing in spite of new telecommunication means. One would think travel would be reduced but in reality travel has increased. Everyone is travelling, from people who know how to travel to people with absolutely no expertise, therefore the risks have been magnified because of a very large population travelling, inexperienced for the most part, and going into anywhere in the world including remote places.
Would you say there are more travel risks than before?
There are more risks because there are more travellers and more locations being visited. At the same time, it’s true that the geopolitics is making a number of countries in the world somewhat dangerous so it is of a different nature from 30 years ago, where there were many countries people were hardly visiting. If you look at Asia now, everyone is going everywhere inside Asia – this clearly was not the clear 30 years ago.
And you also have the health situation. The level of healthcare has improved everywhere, but because you have so many travellers travelling so quickly the risks and spread of epidemics today are far higher than it used to be. Ebola is a very good example; Ebola has been prevalent in Sierra Leone for a long time, just that you (now) have international travellers and therefore when there is an epidemic it spreads faster.
What’s the greatest challenge operating a medical and travel risk security service company? Are there any risks too?
(Laughs) Running any business, well, there is no reward without risk, let’s put it this way. Our business is of course to manage risks for our clients, but in doing so we are putting ourselves at risk. We had two managers dying in Bali’s bombing 12 years ago and often our staff are thrown into fairly risk situations – this is the nature of our business.
In addition, from a business management perspective, the issue for us is to be able to respond to more diverse situations with all the necessary resources, while at the same time manage our day-to-day operations, of which 80 per cent is to offer advice. Eighty per cent of the cases we manage are actually of advisory nature and are being resolved just through contact with our assistance centres around the world.
We have to balance out the day-to-day needs of our members with the exceptional needs in cases of major crises.
Would you say terrorism is a greater threat than before?
It’s very difficult to say if there is more or less terrorism, but the terrorism threat is endemic around the world. The experience of the past 10 years has shown that terrorism does strike in very difficult places like Afghanistan or Pakistan but it does strike as well in places like Bangkok or even in advanced places like Boston, London or Paris for that matter. The terrorist threat is around the world and it’s clear that it’s not going to go away.
So are companies getting more prepared or complacent about terrorism threats?
Corporations now are starting to have a clear idea of their duty of care, which means getting their staff prepared and supported during mobility. Whether it’s on the medical or security side, more corporations have plans in place to support their staff, prepare them before and during a trip, and manage them in times of crises.
Are Asian corporations faring well in this aspect?
Yes. Asian corporations were clearly behind a few years ago but now I would say Japanese, Singaporean and (South) Korean companies have caught up with the west. You are not going to find a well-organised company without a specific programme in place. It’s clearly linked to the development of your economy – the more developed an economy is, the more advanced the plans are going to be. Most countries are catching up quickly.
One thing that is being realised by corporations – whether government institutions, NGOs or scholastic organisations – is that duty of care is fulfilled through planning but there is also a return on investments in planning. The more you prepare your people for international travel, the less costs you incur in the end. There is both a social and financial message, so the returns is there – financial, HR, goodwill – on having in place a comprehensive system for both medical and security situations.
With an increasingly mobile workforce and more business travel than ever before, what trends do you see in the travel security risk sector?
People want far more access to information than before, to go beyond the headlines that you see on a TV broadcast. There is far more sophistication from clients on their requirements for information and advice; they want adapted advice tailored to the location and their industry. As a consequence, there is a requirement to access local information – people don’t want to call one centre in Singapore or London and get a one-word advice. (Travellers are seeking) more localised and distributed information.
Expertise (hence) cannot be centralized; the world has become so vibrant and complex that expertise needs to be locally based, and this is really what I’m pushing for our company to be more distributed around the world and less around hubs.
It’s been 30 years since the founding of International SOS, what’s the growth strategy for the company moving forward?
Former French prime minister Georges Benjamin Clemenceauonce said when he was nearing 80: “Everything I’ve learned in life, I’ve learned it after 30.” So there is still a great deal for us to learn since we have just turned 30. I myself too am trying to stick to 30 instead of my own age (laughs).
We have pioneered and developed a full industry in medical and travel security risk management, which did not exist 30 years ago. We have created the industry and the capability and we massively innovated this field and continue to innovate all the time. We see so many people copying us around the world.
The ideal for me is one, we need to keep expanding geographically. We are in 82 countries today, we still have a lot of countries we should expand into. For example, we just opened in Mexico and growing quite rapidly in Latin America. We have a (global) network with the capability to provide services everywhere, but we don’t have subsidiaries selling our services around the world.
Second is clearly technology, as healthcare is changing at a very rapid pace, so we are digitalising most of the customer experience with us, so customers can access us or our assistance centres as quickly as possible on the phone or in the digital world.
Can you share the most difficult situations or emergencies you’ve encountered?
Clearly the recent Sabah earthquake was a complex one, (due to) the extraordinary loss of life as well as the very complex set of people and logistics involved. The circumstances for deceased people and repatriate them to their home country is a very complex issue because you want to bring people back to their families as quickly as you can but at the same time the local authorities are always requesting administrative issues, so you have to manage these at the same time.
In cases where we have been involved, the biggest ever was 2004 tsunami, because it not only hit a large number of countries – Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, etc – it also affected a very large area and population, and (the impacts lasted) for months and even years. This one was perhaps the most taxing one in terms of operations and emotional engagement for our staff, and complexity in terms of technical response.
