Private medical insurance (PMI) sales remain strong and are expected to continue growing despite inflation hitting consumers across the country, according to Axa Health and Aviva.
Kelly Morris, head of client retention and client delivery at Axa Health, explained: “Cost of living has been a challenge for everybody – but demand is still buoyant.”
She said that was a combination of two main things: “An increase in health and wellbeing awareness, particularly in the post-pandemic years, but also the challenges that exist in the NHS.”
Morris (pictured second from left) was speaking during the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII) Health and Welfare Summit yesterday.
Adrian Nye, supply chain director of Aviva Health & Protection agreed: “There is quite a lot of resilience.
“The number of lives that we cover with PMI has probably grown by about 8% per annum over three years – and we think that will continue.”
But customers are not just buying more PMI, they are using it more too.
Nye said: “Customers are utilising the product much more than they were previously.
“People are moving away from seeing the product as a luxury to now seeing it as an everyday essential.”
In August, Health & Protection’s third Individual PMI report found providers were continuing to see significant demand in the underwritten PMI market with lives covered having grown by 11% and estimated to exceed 1.5 million by the end of 2023.
This followed growth of 12% and 13% in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
Earlier this month, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) reported a 7% increase in the overall uptake of individual and workplace PMI policies with an additional 411,000 people covered in 2023 compared to 2022.