Private health and protection insurance expert and editor
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Corporate health insurance gives employees and sometimes their families, access to private healthcare in the event they should ever need it. Corporate health insurance is considered one of the most highly valued paid for benefits among employees and equally provides significant benefits to the employer.
By having access to private healthcare, employees can avoid potential delays on NHS waiting lists, be treated faster and be back to full health quicker.
Corporate health insurance will always cover the cost of inpatient treatments where an overnight stay is required to treat acute conditions. Many corporate health insurance policies will also cover treatments where a day bed is required, but access to more comprehensive outpatient services is usually an extra cost.
All corporate health insurance policies will include inpatient treatment, with many also covering day-patient treatment too. While having this cover is an excellent starting point, it’s important to point out that all of the tests, consultations and diagnosis leading up to treatment will need to take place through the NHS.
With most policies, you will have the choice to include part or full out-patient cover. As you increase the level of cover provided, the cost will go up, but by giving your employees at least some outpatient cover you will lessen the risk of their treatment being delayed. Many employers opt to include outpatient treatments up to an annual cash value to negate the risk, without seeing premiums go up too much.
Each provider will exclude slightly different things from the policy, but broadly speaking all of them will exclude the following:
The benefits of Corporate Health Insurance are numerous, to both employer and employee.
The cost of Corporate Health Insurance will be dictated by a number of factors and of course by the insurer’s current rates.
In configuring your Corporate Health Insurance you have a number of options available to you which will both affect the amount of cover your employees have and the cost of the policy.
Level of outpatient cover
You can choose to provide no outpatient cover; cover up to a cash value or full cover. It is recommended to provide some level of outpatient cover, just to avoid your employee’s treatment being held up by delays in being diagnosed.
Mental health cover is seen by many businesses as an essential addition to their group health insurance policy. It should be noted though that as the cost of treating mental health issues are amongst the highest of any illness, adding this cover will increase the premium significantly.
You may wish to allow employees to add their family members to the corporate policy to afford them the same cover. It is, of course, a significant additional cost but can really help your team should their close ones become unwell.
If you are looking to reduce the cost of health insurance, you can look at add the “6 weeks NHS wait” clause into the policy. This will mean that the employee can only use the private health insurance policy if the waiting time for their treatment on the NHS exceeds 6 weeks.
Insurers will typically divide their hospital list into two tiers, standard and upper. You’ll often find that many London hospitals are only included with the upper tier and indeed they sometimes have a tier of their own. Depending on the location of your employees, where the hospitals are situated will be an important deciding factor.
Routine dental and optical care won’t be included in your policy as standard. Yes, more serious illnesses relating to the eyes and mouth will be included; checkups and such won’t be. You can usually opt to add this to the policy though for a relatively small additional contribution.
Many Employers will set up a health cash plan alongside their main policy to lessen the impact of any excesses on the policy. In the event that a staff member becomes unwell, they pay the excess but then reclaim it via the health cash plan. Surprisingly, this is often cheaper than simply having a policy with no excess.
There are several key types of underwriting used for Corporate Health Insurance policies; each of them assesses the risk in a different way and so, each has its own pros and cons.
The most commonly used type of underwriting for Corporate Health Insurance policies in the UK is Moratorium. With Moratorium Underwriting, you and your employees will not need to complete any medical history questionnaires, as the insurer will effectively provide cover on the basis of any pre-existing conditions occurring in the past five years being automatically excluded.
With Full Medical Underwriting, the insurer will look at each of your employees' entire medical history in order to provide a quote. This type of underwriting will give you and your employees a detailed summary of what is and isn’t included; however, it is time-consuming and for anything more than a dozen employees, it can be difficult to complete.
As the name suggests, Medical History Disregarded ignores any pre-existing conditions and provides complete cover anyway. This is the most comprehensive form of underwriting and as you might expect is also the most expensive and typically only available to groups of 20 or more members.
Continuing Personal Medical Exclusions allows employees who already have Private Medical Insurance to join your scheme, or for you to switch to a different provider, ensuring that current coverage of pre-existing conditions is continued in the future.
In order to apply for Corporate Health Insurance, we will need a few details from you, such as the dates of birth of your employees, their genders and their work postcodes. In addition, we will need to know what type of underwriting you would like to use and whether you would like any additional options on the policy. While we could do this without speaking to you, we do find that having an initial call speeds up the process considerably. Once we have this information we will approach the UK’s leading providers and then come back to you with a free report of our findings.
Compare the leading providers of Corporate Health Insurance with us and receive free, impartial advice from a UK based account manager. The pricing we provide for you will be the best currently available and we’ll give you tailored recommendations based on your requirements. Whether it is a new policy or a medical insurance renewal, we'll help you find the best policy.
Disclaimer: This information is general and what is best for you will depend on your personal circumstances. Please speak with a financial adviser or do your own research before making a decision.
Chris Steele is myTribe’s resident expert in private health insurance and healthcare, with over a decade of experience in the field. As a Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) qualified professional, he has helped countless consumers navigate private medical insurance. Regularly quoted by national media, Chris is a trusted voice in the UK insurance industry, with his insights featured in leading consumer finance publications.
Yes, it is. When Health Insurance is paid for by an employer it is a P11D Benefit in Kind and as such is taxable.
How much employers pay very much depends on the number of people being covered and the level of protection which is put in place.
Group Private Medical Insurance is another name for Corporate Health Insurance or Business Health Insurance. All three names are interchangeable.
Yes, assuming you have a minimum of two employees you will be able to get Corporate Health Insurance. Regardless of the size of your business, it is always best to speak to us first as we can help you find the best policy.
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