In recent years, the individual PMI market has seen flat growth. How will the market develop to combat this and where is it going next?
Dave Priestley, PruHealth
We see huge opportunities for growth in health insurance, but we look at this market in a different way to the more traditional PMI companies.
Our view is traditional PMI is a product of the past and what consumers are looking for is a different kind of proposition than a PMI plan and can do more for them than that kind of plan ever did. The direction we are exploring is around wellness.
Fundamentally, we believe consumers today are more sophisticated and have more personal requirements from their insurance products.
Our research tells us that people want help and support to live a healthy life. The opportunity for us is to significantly increase the value people get from their insurance product by investing in benefits that help them to live healthily.
That is informing our product development and we are starting to see a lot of evidence through our consumer interactions that back that up. With traditional PMI, the next time people hear from their insurer, if they do not claim, is at renewal and that is all the engagement they have.
We see there is an opportunity to engage on a much more consistent basis by giving them value, such as rewards and incentives for a healthy lifestyle back, particularly if they are not claiming.
We are starting to see other insurers look to replicate aspects of what we’ve done. But the point is not to offer discounts. It is to create a wellness programme that encourages people to live healthy lives and help them sustain that.
Philip Knight, Premier Choice Healthcare
In recent years, I was quite concerned due to market consolidation, such as Standard Life merging into the PruHealth book of business and Bupa dropping out of the intermediated market.
There was a point that if you wanted the lowest cost product, everything went to PruHealth. Now, Bupa have re-entered and we have other players such as April UK and Passport to Health.
There are not a lot of new ideas. However, I was doing a quote for a virgin client and prices were within £20 of each other, they have flexible benefits, and we can talk about benefits rather than pricing.
One of my concerns as an intermediary is that I don’t want my clients to buy from comparison sites. The way product construction is going in terms of complex modular plans is such that it mitigates away from even sophisticated clients looking to buy directly online.
The way insurers are putting products in the market does put across the need for proper advice, which is a great thing. I am seeing an increasing complexity in what I am able to do for clients.
We can shape our reality if we go out and speak to clients and grow our market. It is not a case of ‘there is no business out there’ – you have to look for it. I’m not suggesting proactive marketing is the solution to the flat market, but I do think the current tranche of intermediaries have to work a little harder and smarter. I work with introducers and IFAs – it is a case of looking for opportunities.
