Bupa saw significant growth in membership numbers, revenue and profits across the group in the first half of 2025, but UK profitability slipped as higher claims, adviser commission and investment took hold.
However, the insurer said its £17m compensation bill after admitting in June it failed to pay valid claims in Australia for several years would not affect the group’s results.
Bupa’s UK, global and India business unit revenue grew 11% to £2.81bn with underlying profit almost doubling to £123m from £64m.
The UK insurance arm added more than 149,000 net new customers across medical insurance, health trusts, dental insurance and cash plan in the first half of 2025 – taking it to more than 4.1m.
Higher premiums also contributed to the revenue growth as a result of rate increases following higher claims.
However, the insurer noted underlying profit fell which was “driven by a higher loss ratio, increased acquisition costs and additional investment to facilitate further growth”.
IPMI and clinics profit up
Its international private medical insurance (IPMI) business Bupa Global serves around 400,000 customers and reported higher revenue and underlying profit following growth in customer numbers, and lower loss ratios from global claims management.
In the first half of 2025, the insurer expanded its IPMI presence in France and Qatar through new strategic partnerships and opened a new office in Nairobi to support growth across East Africa.
UK Health Services delivered growth in revenue and underlying profit following higher customer numbers in clinics and the Cromwell Hospital, new digital services and the expanded network of health centres.
The insurer has grown its portfolio through the acquisition of London Medical and The Dermatology Partnership and announced the acquisition of New Victoria Hospital in London – its first hospital acquisition in the UK since 2008 – enabling it to provide more services directly to customers.
Bupa said its UK dental operation was delivering against its turnaround strategy with high growth in underlying profit and strong demand for services, including its subscription product.
UK Care Services also delivered growth in revenue and strong growth in underlying profit.
Australia claims compensation
In Australia, the insurer said its results were unaffected by £17m compensation for breaches of Australian consumer law when it failed to pay valid claims, as this was provided for in its 2024 full year results.
Earlier this summer Bupa and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) jointly proposed to the federal court to settle the action by its Australia Health Insurance business for AU$35m (£17m).
“We are already well progressed with compensating affected customers and providers and will continue to uplift compliance,” Bupa said.
As part of the settlement, Bupa admitted that between May 2018 to August 2023 it engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations regarding members’ entitlements to health insurance benefits for certain claims.
It also admitted that between June 2020 and February 2021 it engaged in unconscionable conduct by incorrectly assessing certain claims after it failed to generate and manually review a report which had previously been generated to identify incorrectly automatically assessed claims.
The ACCC said Bupa had admitted this was unconscionable in certain circumstances, including where it knew the manual review was necessary to ensure it identified and paid benefits for those claims.
More than 40 million customers
Overall, the UK-based health insurer reported a 23% surge in insurance customers to cover 40.9 million lives around the world.
With revenue rising 11% to £8.8bn and pre-tax profit up 14% to £582m the insurer grew its cash reserves to £2.3bn, up from £1.8bn at the same point in 2024.
The Asia Pacific and Europe and Latin America businesses also increased their underlying profits.
Asia Pacific profits rose 11.5% to £242m while the Europe and Latin America arm hit £203m, up 44%.
Bupa Group CEO Iñaki Ereño said in the first six months of the year, it had served more customers than ever before and opened 61 new health provision sites around the world.
“I am proud of the results we have delivered and I would like to thank our customers and colleagues,” he said.
“We are building on the strong foundations that we have developed over the past four years.” He added the new 3×100 strategy was helping the organisation to go further and faster to deliver its purpose and ambition.