Get an Employees' Compensation Insurance Quote in Hong Kong

Employees' Compensation insurance is compulsory for every employer in Hong Kong, and it is quick to arrange. Tell us about your business and Alea compares the market and comes back with a competitive quote, then handles the paperwork and stays with you through renewals and claims, at no extra cost.

Why this cover is not optional

Under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance, every employer must insure this liability, with a minimum of HK$100 million of cover per event. Going without it is a criminal offence, and an uninsured employer bears the full cost of any claim personally. Households employing a domestic helper must be insured too. Because this cover is a legal requirement rather than a discretionary purchase, the process of getting a quote is generally more straightforward than for a voluntary benefit: the plan itself is largely standardised by the Ordinance, so the questions we need to ask are about your business, not about designing a benefit package.

What you need to request a quote

• Your industry or the nature of your business

• The number of employees to be covered

• Your estimated annual payroll

• Whether any staff perform manual or higher-risk duties

These are the same details that set the price; see how EC insurance is costed.

What happens next

An advisor reviews your details, compares suitable insurers, and comes back with options and prices, explained in plain terms. Once you choose, we place the policy and issue the certificate of insurance you need to show your business is covered. For most straightforward businesses, this whole process, from submitting the form to holding a valid policy, can be completed well within a normal working week, and often faster.

Cover for any business type

• Offices and professional services, low-cost and fast to place.

• Retail, food and beverage, suited to shop and kitchen environments.

• Construction and higher-risk trades, including help applying to the Residual Scheme if needed.

• Households with a domestic helper; see helper insurance.

If your business is considered hard to place

A small number of businesses, usually in the highest-risk trades or with a difficult claims history, find that some insurers are reluctant to quote at all. This is where a broker's market knowledge matters most: rather than a single rejected application ending the search, we know which insurers are actively writing business in a given sector this year, since appetite shifts over time, and we can guide an application to the Employees' Compensation Insurance Residual Scheme if the open market genuinely cannot provide a quote. No Hong Kong employer is meant to be left unable to obtain this compulsory cover, and the Residual Scheme exists precisely for this situation.

Documents that speed up the process

While the initial quote request only needs the basics, having a few supporting documents ready speeds up the final placement: your Business Registration certificate, a breakdown of employee numbers and roles if your workforce is mixed across risk categories, and, if you are switching insurer, your expiring policy schedule and a summary of any claims in the past three years. None of these are needed to get a first indicative quote, but they are typically requested before a policy is actually issued, so having them ready shortens the gap between accepting a quote and holding a valid certificate of insurance.

After your policy is placed

Once cover is in place, keep the certificate of insurance somewhere accessible, since you may be asked to produce it, for example by a client conducting due diligence before awarding a contract, or during a Labour Department inspection. If your payroll or headcount changes meaningfully during the year, let us know so the policy can be adjusted rather than waiting until the year-end reconciliation to catch up with reality. And as your renewal approaches, we will proactively check the market again rather than simply rolling the policy over, so the price you pay continues to reflect current conditions rather than drifting upward unchecked.

Add group medical at the same time

Many employers arrange compulsory EC cover and voluntary group medical insurance together. Tick the box on the form and we will quote both. See how they differ in EC versus group medical.

What our advisors typically check before quoting

Before approaching insurers, an advisor will usually confirm a few things that affect the quality of the quote you receive: whether your stated payroll figure is an estimate or a firm number, whether any staff move between roles of different risk during the year, for example office staff who occasionally visit sites, and whether you use any subcontracted or agency labour whose EC status needs to be clarified separately. Getting these details right at the outset avoids a quote that later needs revising, or worse, a policy that turns out not to reflect how the business actually operates once a claim arises.

A typical first-time scenario

A newly incorporated company hiring its first two or three employees is one of the most common situations we see. In this case, the process is usually very simple: confirm the nature of the work, provide an estimated annual payroll based on the salaries you plan to pay, and a quote can typically be returned within a day or two. Because there is no claims history to assess and the risk class is usually straightforward for a small new business, this is one of the fastest types of cover to put in place, and many new employers are surprised at how quickly it comes together once they start the process, having assumed insurance would be a slower undertaking.

A typical switching scenario

Employers switching from an existing EC insurer, often because a broker has identified better terms elsewhere, need to provide a little more: the current policy's renewal date, your claims history over the past few years, and confirmation of your current payroll. We handle the comparison against your existing cover and the cancellation of the old policy in step with the new one starting, so there is no gap in your compulsory cover during the transition.

What we ask if your business does not fit a standard category

Some businesses genuinely do not fit neatly into a single description, for example a company that runs both a retail shop and a small in-house delivery operation. Rather than forcing a business like this into one risk class, we work through each distinct activity separately with the insurer, since this usually produces a more accurate, and often more favourable, overall rating than describing the whole operation under whichever single category seems closest. This is a normal part of the quoting conversation and not something that should slow the process down significantly.

The figures behind this requirement

The specifics are worth stating plainly before you request a quote. The statutory minimum cover is HK$100 million per event for employers with up to 200 employees, rising to HK$200 million above that. Non-compliance carries a fine of up to HK$100,000 and up to two years' imprisonment. And the Labour Department recorded 28,612 occupational injuries in Hong Kong in 2024, which is the risk this compulsory cover exists to meet.

Ready? Request your Employees' Compensation quote, or talk to an advisor.