Westfield Health's Paul Shires talks to Paul Robertson and makes the case for more adviser engagement with the health products market.
In recent years, Westfield Health, primarily known as a cash plan provider, has made efforts to move its market on, either through innovation or evolution. For example, in 2012 it introduced its hospital treatment insurance (HTI), which pays for a limited number of operations and sits between the cash plan and private medical insurance (PMI) markets.
But regardless of product saleability and the cash plan market booming, albeit in the employer-paid market, there is still only a select group of IFAs and general advisers involved in their sale. This clearly bothers Paul Shires, Westfield's executive director of sales and marketing.
"The cash plan market is booming and it is pure Pareto's rule - probably 80% of our business is coming from about 20% of the intermediaries and brokers who actually have agencies with us. So we are keen to encourage more and more intermediaries to really see the value of health insurance products.
"I think some intermediaries who do not traditionally sell health insurance perhaps assume straightaway that all health insurance is akin to private medical insurance, which can become quite complex''.
Carving out niche
In essence Westfield is a little perturbed that the adviser market does not, as a result, promote health cash plans and the wider health insurance proposition, arguing (not without foundation) that it really is straightforward.
But what of HTI? Is it a new branch of the market where you have PMI, cash plans, and sitting between them, HTI; or is it as a bridge between the two? When Westfield set out to create HTI, it was not to fill the gap or even to bridge it. The company simply saw a need for this sort of product, without an ulterior motive.
Shires says: "Often in a marketplace, there is a reason for a gap and that is because a provider cannot provide the value a customer wants in that space. So we did not just try and plug something into that space.
"We went out and spoke to our customers; spoke to intermediaries; what they are fearful of; what they want; what our customers' employees need; and so on.
"With a changing NHS and a changing health care environment, we soon realised that a product that picked up where the cash plan left off - to pay for inpatient treatment or elective surgery - that was the gap we needed to fill with hospital treatment insurance. It so happens that yes, it does in some way bridge the gap between health cash plans and PMI. But that was not the ultimate aim."
