Health insurer nib has tied up with US insurance giant UnitedHealthcare International, its first overseas strategic alliance with a global counterpart.

As part of the deal, nib will provide UnitedHealthcare policyholders in Australia access to local hospitals, physicians and direct payment arrangements.

The alliance is tailored to cover expats working for US firms with bases in Australia, but there is no reciprocal arrangement for Australian expats in the US to get access to UnitedHealthcare insurance.

nib – which currently has 460,000 policyholders, did not indicate how many new customers it will gain as part of the deal.

“It’s not yet clear exactly, it depends on their [UnitedHealthcare] ability to gain this business from their clients,” nib CEO Mark Fitzgibbon told AAP.

Mr Fitzgibbon said this deal could be the first of further international opportunities for nib.

“We have a view that increasingly people will need global health insurance cover and that if we don’t have an involvement in this phenomenon we could be missing an enormous opportunity,” he said in a statement.

At 1130 AEST shares in nib were down one cent to $1.585.