We’ll help you to balance care and cost
Our National Health Service has arguably never been under greater strain, as it copes with the legacy of Covid; staff shortages; and the increasing care needs of an aging, growing population.
It’s little wonder then that more people are using insurance or personal savings to access private hip, knee, cataract, and even some heart and cancer treatments.
When this affects your employees their normal focus and productivity can be overwhelmed by the worry of getting treatment and getting better.
This means a difficult balancing act for employers. There’s no doubt that PMI is a powerful attraction and retention benefit which gives staff more control over when, where and who treats them, but on the other hand, insurance premiums can typically increase by more than 20% per annum.
To manage this, you really need to partner with experts who understand PMI plan design and know the insurance market.
Fulcrum has years of design and rate-negotiation experience, but this is only half of what we do. We also take great care to support you when you need fast unbiased explanations of benefit rules and claims procedures.
Not all claims helpline conversations end with a happy customer – when this happens, your busy day can be interrupted by needing to unpick what’s gone wrong for an employee. When you partner with Fulcrum, we can take these time-sensitive issues off your desk and sort them for you.
Did you know?
Cataract treatments have risen by nearly 40 percent from pre-pandemic levels. This translates to an extra 200,000 people a year having the procedure, with close to 60 percent of operations being done privately
(source – The Ophthalmologist, Sept 2024)
Buying PMI for groups of less than 150 employees
Clear advice to make the right choices
If you think all PMI contracts look and behave the same way you’re probably using the wrong adviser.
Medical insurers use the combined claims experience of all of their small group customers to generate age-related ‘base rates’. These are then adjusted to reflect the choices you make – about hospital coverage, outpatient limits, mental health, and pre-existing health conditions – they’ll be further adjusted if your employees are claiming more or less than the average customer (pre-existing conditions can be covered when 15+ employees are insured).
We’ll walk you through these choices and help you to make the right ones for your business. We’ll also guide your scheme setup and continue to be on hand to help with membership, admin and claims advice.
Buying PMI for larger group schemes
When you insure more than 150 employees, your premiums will usually reflect your own claims experience, as opposed to your insurer’s wider customer experience. This means two important differences; (1) you’ll pay fixed single, couple, family rates (smaller groups pay individual age-related premiums); (2) you’ll receive high level claims reports, including the main types of treatment claimed, and a monthly tally of your actual spend against your projected annual claim fund.
Fixed rates simplify your member comms and admin, while claims reports can provide leverage when your rates are renegotiated. It’s easier to create market competition when you can share positive claims experience – or explain a one-off high claim that’s unlikely to repeat in the following year.
The larger your workforce, the more choices you have in how you insure them. Larger schemes can consider additional tax-efficient funding options, like Corporate Deductibles and Healthcare Trusts, but your most important decisions concern the treatments you cover and the limits you set.
For example, the NHS is a world leader in treating many forms of cancer. You can’t always improve wait times by going private, so it’s important that your design doesn’t simply add cost without improving patient care.
We can advise you on different cover options to give you more control over how your scheme is used – and ultimately more sustainable premiums.
In all cases, we can help you with –
Did you know?
Healthcare Trusts are sometimes a more efficient way to fund employee healthcare.
What Our Clients Say
Partnerships built on trust, results, and understanding - here's what our clients have to say.
“By identifying and recognising our specific requirements and priorities, Fulcrum has helped us to tailor our company benefits around a relatively strong local National Health Service. This has resulted in significantly reduced insurance costs without reducing the speed or quality of care. We have always found their honest and pragmatic approach to be a good fit with our own business.”
“With our previous provider, I always felt like ‘just a number’ calling them with any queries – whereas an expert outfit like Fulcrum offers personalised service. After meeting them, we discovered there is much to insurance plan design which can impact massively on premiums”.
“Your team are a credit to Fulcrum. Michelle has been excellent with progress and updates to the schemes we’ve implemented.”
“Fulcrum has helped us to protect more employees, through better plan design.”
“Fulcrum thinks in a much more creative and strategic way than the average broker, and as a result provides a much higher value of service. We have saved approximately £50k in direct costs and far more in management time, as administration is far simpler.”
“Good engineers are thin on the ground and it’s important to us to attract and retain some of the best in the industry. Feedback tells us our employees value the benefits aspect of their package, and we are keen go the extra mile with this. We have found Fulcrum’s service to be second to none, extremely knowledgeable and professional.”
“Our experience with the team at Fulcrum has been nothing short of fantastic. They are friendly, approachable and very quick to respond to any queries. They spend time to explain situations and processes, to ensure that we understand them fully which demonstrates their dedication to great customer service”.
“Fulcrum’s advice and hands on approach has enabled us to provide a competitive and comprehensive Benefits package for our Employees.”
“I was initially sceptical that Fulcrum would be able to help us with our staff benefits packages as I felt we already had good value from providers. However, their careful and methodical analysis, combined with some innovative thinking, ended up with a great result with considerable savings for us. What’s more, the savings kicked in immediately. We continue to be delighted with their service.”
“Through diligent assessment of the market and tough negotiations on our behalf Fulcrum has saved us many thousands of pounds on our staff benefits. As well as major cost savings, the team at Fulcrum are exceptional in their professionalism and customer service”.
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