Seconded or expatriate: the difference that determines your health cover

A seconded employee keeps their French employment contract: their employer remains the French company, and employer and employee contributions keep being paid in France as if they were working there. This continuity is evidenced by form A1 (or an equivalent certificate outside the EU), issued by Urssaf before departure. Secondment is inherently temporary — 24 months maximum in the EU, EEA and Switzerland, subject to extension conditions, or a period set by a bilateral agreement elsewhere.

An expatriate employee in the social-security sense — whether hired locally or signing a local contract directly with a host-country employer — stops falling under the French scheme. They are required to contribute to their country of activity’s social security scheme, with no time limit, and there is no form A1 to request: there is no longer any French affiliation to evidence.

How it feels or the job title settle nothing: only precise documents do. Three things to ask HR for, or to check yourself, before treating a status as settled:

• The employment contract (or its assignment rider): does it specify a secondment, or is it a local contract?
• Form A1: was it issued by Urssaf before departure? Its absence generally signals an expatriation, not a secondment.
• Local registration: is the employee registered with a social security scheme in the host country?

A seconded employee holding form A1 stays covered by French Social Security for the whole assignment: CFE membership therefore has no use for base cover, which already exists — only top-up cover for the gap between French rates and the real local cost keeps a purpose.

An expatriate, by contrast, no longer has French affiliation: it is precisely for this reason that CFE becomes relevant, as a way to voluntarily keep cover modelled on Social Security, to compare with private insurance depending on the local scheme they now fall under.