Insurance is rarely the first thing a founder or CFO wants to discuss when entering a new market, and it is almost always the thing I insist we discuss anyway. Cross-border risk exposure has a habit of surfacing at the worst possible moment — usually after a claim, when the coverage gap is discovered rather than designed.
Domestic policies were not written for cross-border activity
A general liability or directors-and-officers policy purchased in your home market typically assumes home-market operations. The moment you have employees, contracts, or physical assets in another jurisdiction, that policy's assumptions no longer hold — even if the fine print does not explicitly exclude foreign activity, insurers will resist claims that fall outside the risk they priced.
Employment practices liability is the most commonly missed gap
U.S. employment law exposure — wrongful termination claims, discrimination claims, wage and hour disputes — is materially different from most Asian and European jurisdictions, both in frequency and in the size of awards. Companies that have never faced an employment lawsuit at home are sometimes genuinely surprised by how quickly this becomes a real cost center in the U.S.
Product and professional liability need a second look, not a rubber stamp
If your product or service touches U.S. consumers or businesses, the liability standards and litigation environment are different enough that your existing coverage limits — set for a different legal environment — are often simply too low, not wrong in kind but wrong in size.
Key-person and political risk are underrated
For companies whose U.S. operation depends heavily on one or two expatriate executives, key-person coverage is worth pricing out early. And for operations with meaningful capital or asset exposure across multiple jurisdictions, political risk insurance — often dismissed as unnecessary until it is needed — deserves at least a serious conversation with a specialist broker.
Nothing here needs to be resolved before you enter a market. But it should be reviewed with someone who has placed cross-border coverage before, ideally in the same window as your entity structuring decisions — not six months after your first claim teaches you the hard way.
