The international private medical insurance (IPMI) sector is still feeling the after-effects of the Covid pandemic with delays to treatment a key factor behind rising medical inflation, according to SIP Medical Family Office client adviser Chantal Leprêtre.
Health & Protection’s year-end analysis on the state of the IPMI market highlighted sector concerns around the state of global economies as well as cost pressures and cost management as medical inflation stayed stubbornly high in 2025.
Speaking to Health & Protection, Leprêtre outlined some of the reasons she was being given for steep premium increases were still related to the hangover from the pandemic.
“Immediately post-Covid it wasn’t too bad, but then you had the treatment boom where everyone who didn’t have treatment over Covid started having it and it is still having that knock-on effect,” Leprêtre told Health & Protection.
“Often when I speak to insurers to ask what’s gone into this increase, a lot of them say Covid, later treatment and things like that are still having an effect.
“If people got diagnosed a lot later, their treatment was a lot later, it was further down the line, the treatment was more costly, took longer, things like that are driving it.”
