An introduction to UK health insurance companies

We've complied the UK's largest list of UK based private health insurance companies but before you take a look at that we'd like to talk to you about you can be sure you're purchasing your private medical insurance though a health insurance company that's right for your medical needs. Private health insurance just like people's medical needs can be complex and can feel difficult to navigate at times.

How to pick a health insurance company thats right for you

Before you call a broker or insurance provider you should think about what you actually need from a policy. Here are a few questions that will help point you in the right direction.

What do you want to spend ideally monthly on your policy? And what can you actually afford to spend monthly on your policy?
What hospital would you like to be treated at?
Do you mind traveling to specific hospitals that may be further away than your normal one?
Do you need dental cover also? What about mental health / psychiatric cover on your policy?
Which family members would you ideally like to cover and which are absolutely required to be on the policy? If some members of your family have a high claims history you may end up having to decide if they make the premium too expensive or not.
How likely are you to actually claim? If unlikely you may want to think about a higher excess to lower your monthly premium
Just like car insurance you can protect your no claims discount at an additional monthly cost to your premium. Consider before hand how important this is to you.
Do you have any critical areas of cover? If you have a family history of bowel cancer for example you may want to go with a provider that has exceptional cancer cover.
Do you spend a lot of time abroad? If so you may need an international policy.
Do you work in a high risk of injury profession such as semi-pro sports? If so you might need a specialist insurance company.

How long has the company been established and what's their annual premium written

This might seem like a very obvious suggestion but always make sure you are buying your policy from a legitimate health insurance company. There are more reasons than I can mention here but the most obvious two reasons are..

If you choose to pay annually as many do because health insurance companies will often give 5%/10% discounts for annual payers then you will be handing over a large amount of money over the phone either via credit card or direct debit. The last thing you want to to hand over £1000 to a company that does not exist.
The second (and arguably the more important reason) is that if you buy a policy from a company that does not exist then come to make a claim there is no one to pay it for you. Which means you'll either not get the medical treatment you should get from your policy or you'll have to pay for the private medical treatment yourself then come to claim from the insurance company only to find they don't exist and you're stuck with thousands of pounds of medical debt.

What do the reviews say?

Online reviews are a great way to check how the average person (like us!) feels about their experience of buying a policy through that particular health insurance company. So be sure to check out all the normal places like TrustPilot etc. For smaller insurance companies make sure the reviews look real. It's very easy nowadays to buy fake online reviews. so look for long reviews, from real looking users that explain in depth their experience with the company.

What is their claim ratio?

One of the most important factors when buying health insurance from any company is how often do they actually pay out when their customers make a claim. Now don't expect that to be 100% as sometimes people do make fraudulent claims or don't fully understand what their policy covers then go to make a claim and only realise then it's not covered by the policy. Aviva for example claim to of paid out on 98% of their claims (https://www.aviva.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/04/one-claim-paid-every-four-seconds-our-2018-global-claims-data). Remember if you go to make a claim and the insurance company refuses to payout you can always go to the financial ombudsman who will impartially decide who's right and who's wrong. Sometimes insurance companies will just pay the claim if its small rather than put resources into fighting the claim.

We hope we've provided you with a better understanding of private medical insurance and given you a few things to think about before you start your search. Remember there are very few things that are more important than your health so always remember to ask the broker or insurance company if you don't understand a particular product option, claims process or policy exclusion. A good thing to do is to go through various scenarios for medical claims you think you more most likely to encounter (for example bowl cancer claims if you have a family history of it) and see how it would exactly work and what would be covered and not covered.