Despite NHS waiting lists reached record highs, the UK’s largest insurer added 170,000 new health insurance clients in the past year.
As the burden on the NHS increases and wait lists for treatments reach record highs, the head of Aviva, the largest insurer in the UK, has stated that there are “big opportunities” to extend private health coverage in the country.
In the previous year, the business added 170,000 new clients who either signed up on their own or through their employers for health insurance. After Bupa and Axa, it now ranks third in terms of market share in the UK with more than one million customers.
The president and CEO of Aviva, Amanda Blanc, claimed that there has been “significant expansion of the need for things like digital GP,” which provides patients with access to primary care physicians who are qualified by the NHS via online consultations and text.
In the six months leading up to June 30, Aviva’s sales of insurance premiums rose by 58% to £86 million as it added more individual customers and businesses that provide private medical insurance for their employees.
“You see there an assortment of consumers [who are] concerned about the possibility that they may not be able to access medical care when they need it,” added Blanc.
In June, an all-time high 7.6 million individuals in England were on the waiting list for normal NHS care, with two out of every five patients having to wait longer than 18 weeks. The British cardiac Foundation reported that around 400,000 people were awaiting treatment for cardiac diseases. Last week, as junior doctors began its fifth round of strikes, the statistics were made public.
Users can now arrange their own MRI and CT scans thanks to collaborations between Aviva and the digital health company HealthKey and diagnostic imaging platform Scan.com. Employees will receive credits through their employers’ medical coverage, which they can use to pay for things like scans, mental health counseling, or nutrition.
“We see this as really broad-ranging, and there are just opportunities everywhere,” added Blanc.
Unions that are demanding more funding for the NHS are outraged by her words. The public sector union Unison’s deputy director of health, Helga Pile, stated: “Years of persistent under-resourcing by the government shouldn’t be an entrepreneurial opportunity for insurance firms.”
The rising NHS issue, according to Thomas Buberl, the president and CEO of the French insurers group Axa, has created “quite a few business opportunities” for the company to build its private healthcare sector, he said last week.
When he announced the addition of eight new privately owned community diagnostic centers earlier this month, health secretary Steve Barclay urged the employment of more commercial and third sector services to help ease the burden on the NHS and shorten waiting lists.
Labour has promised to use “one of the levers”—private provision—to help reduce the backlog. According to the opposition party, the underutilization of private funding results in 331,000 people not receiving care.
This year, the government made plans to replace the Solvency II regulations, which are geared toward the EU, with a UK system that will provide insurance companies more freedom to make investments in long-term growth initiatives. Through the lowering of capital approximately insurance must maintain in light of potential claims, the industry believes that roughly £100 billion in assets will be liberated as a consequence of the reforms.
Over the next ten years, Aviva plans to invest £25 billion in construction projects in the UK, including scientific parks, social housing, and renewable energy. In September, Blanc said, there were going to be consultations to decide which projects qualified.
With 15.5 million members in the UK, the firm also provides pensions, life insurance, vehicle, house, and travel coverage.