Corporate health insurance > Save on group health insurance

What is corporate health insurance?

Corporate health insurance gives employees, and sometimes their families, access to private health care should they need it. Corporate health insurance is considered one of the most valued benefits among employees, and it also provides significant benefits to the employer.
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By having access to private healthcare, employees can avoid potential delays on NHS waiting lists, receive treatment faster and return to full health more quickly.

What does corporate health insurance usually cover?

Corporate health insurance will always cover the costs of hospital treatment where an overnight stay is required to treat acute conditions. Many business health insurance policies will also cover treatments when a day bed is required, but access to more comprehensive outpatient services is usually an additional cost.

Hospital and day patient on most shelves

All corporate health insurance policies will include hospital treatment and many also cover day treatment. While this cover is a great starting point, it’s important to point out that all tests, consultations and diagnoses leading up to treatment will need to be done through the NHS.

Outpatient examination, tests and treatment

With most policies, you will have the choice of including partial or full outpatient coverage. As you increase the level of coverage provided, costs will increase, but by giving your employees at least some outpatient coverage, you will reduce the risk of delaying their treatment. Many employers choose to include outpatient treatment up to an annual cash value in order to reduce risk without increasing premiums too much.

Exclusions from corporate health insurance

Each provider will exclude slightly different things from the policy, but generally speaking they will all exclude the following:

Benefits of corporate health insurance

The advantages of corporate health insurance are numerous, both for the employer and the employee.

Benefits for employers of corporate health insurance

• Reduce staff absenteeism
• Get employees back to work as soon as possible
• Reduce stress in the workplace
• Attract new employees
• Retain existing talent

Corporate health insurance employee benefits

• Avoid potential delays on NHS waiting lists
• Be flexible about the place and time of treatment
• Access medicines and treatments that may not be available on the NHS
• Get enhanced psychiatric care
• More choice than a treatment consultant

Corporate health insurance costs

The cost of corporate health insurance will be dictated by a number of factors and of course the insurer’s current rates.

Factors affecting the cost of corporate health insurance

• The level of coverage you choose
• Number of people on the shelf
• Average age of the group
• Type of warranty used
• Employee location
• Selected list of hospitals
• Scope of pre-existing conditions
• Your industry and employee occupations

Corporate health insurance policy options

When configuring your corporate health insurance, there are a number of options available to you that will affect both the amount of coverage your employees have and the cost of the policy.

Level of outpatient coverage

You can choose not to have outpatient insurance; coverage up to cash value or full coverage. It is recommended that you provide some level of outpatient coverage, just to avoid delaying your employee’s treatment due to a delay in diagnosis.

Mental health cover

Mental health coverage is seen by many companies as an essential addition to their group health insurance policy. However, it should be noted that the costs of treating mental health problems are among the highest of any illness, adding this coverage will increase the premium significantly.

Adding family members

You may want to allow employees to add their family members to the corporate policy to provide them with the same coverage. It’s a significant additional cost, of course, but it can really help your team if their loved ones get sick.

6 week NHS wait

If you want to reduce your health insurance costs, you can add a “6 week NHS waiting” clause to your policy. This will mean that an employee can only use a private health insurance policy if the waiting time for NHS treatment exceeds 6 weeks.

Hospital chart

Insurers will usually divide their list of hospitals into two levels, standard and higher. You will often find that many London hospitals are only included in the higher tier and indeed sometimes have their own tier. Depending on the location of your employees, the location of hospitals will be an important deciding factor.

Dental and optical cover

Routine dental and optical care will not be included as standard in your policy. Yes, more serious illnesses related to the eyes and mouth will be included; review and that will not happen. You can usually opt to add this to the policy, but for a relatively small additional contribution.

Health Cash Plan

Many employers will also set up a health cash plan alongside their main policy to reduce the impact of any excesses on the policy. In the event that a member of staff falls ill, they pay the excess but are then reimbursed through the health cash plan. Surprisingly, this is often cheaper than simply having a policy with no excess.

Types of taking out corporate health insurance

There are several key types of insurance used for corporate health insurance policies; each of them assesses risk in a different way and thus, each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Warranty moratorium

The most commonly used type of underwriting for corporate health insurance policies in the UK is a moratorium. With moratorium insurance, you and your employees will not need to complete any medical history questionnaires, as the insurer will effectively provide cover based on the automatic exclusion of any pre-existing conditions that have occurred in the past five years.

Full medical insurance

With Full Medical Underwriting, the insurer will review the entire medical history of each of your employees to make a quote. This type of warranty will give you and your employees a detailed summary of what is and isn’t included; however, it is time-consuming and can be difficult to execute for anything more than a dozen employees.

Medical history neglected

As the name suggests, Medical History Neglect ignores any pre-existing conditions and provides full coverage anyway. This is the most extensive form of guarantee and as you might expect it is also the most expensive and usually only available to groups of 20 or more members.

Permanent Personal Medical Exclusions (CPME)

Permanent personal medical exclusions allow employees who already have private health insurance to join your program or for you to switch to another provider, ensuring current coverage for existing conditions continues well into the future.

Application procedure for corporate health insurance

In order to apply for corporate health insurance, we will need a few pieces of information from you, such as your employees’ dates of birth, their gender, and their work zip code. In addition, we will need to know what type of insurance you want to use and whether you want additional options on the policy. Although we could do this without talking to you, we feel that the first call speeds up the process considerably. Once we have this information, we will contact the leading providers in the UK and then get back to you with a free report of our findings.

Compare corporate health insurance with myTribe

Compare the leading corporate health insurance providers with us and receive free, impartial advice from UK account managers. The prices we offer you will be the best currently available, and we will provide you with customized recommendations based on your requirements. Whether it’s a new policy or renewal of health insurance, we’ll help you find the best policy.

Advantages of our service:

• Dedicated UK Account Manager
• We compare insurers on your behalf
• Free advice and comparison service
• We are impartial and independent
• All our advisers are FCA approved