Work: Healthcare Cash Plan vs Dental Insurance. Should I be signing up?

frugalandsave

Hi,

just trying to see some experiences or opinions on whether i should sign up with my work benefits. 
They are already providing life insurance, critical illness cover, income protection & private health care. 
I am now wondering on the extras they are offering and whether they are worth it. I would have to pay from my pretax salary.
Heathcare Cash Plan: Provider is Simplyhealth: "Optimise Plus Level 1 + Couple" at £144.00 for the year.
Dental Insurance: Provider is Bupa: "Dental Plan Level 1 + Couple"
My wife and I have no health issues and are also not planning on major dental work. So it be just the usual check ups at the dentist i guess. 
Any opinions on whether to pick one out of the two or pick both? I did see the Healthcare Cash Plan provides some basic cover for dentists but not sure whether thats a convincing argument. 

Any suggestions or opinions appreciated. 

Cheers,
FS

Sandtree

Do you have a NHS dentist?

Maybe have a look at this sites own views on cash plans etc https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/healthcare-cash-plans/

Certainly if you wear glasses, have regular dental issues etc they can be a no brainer but they arent worth it for everyone. Also it will depend if you are paying the full price for the insurance or just the BIK but it may be cheaper elsewhere... I know with “flexible benefits” where you pay full price its not always the most economic way of purchasing

TELLIT01

I don't remember the name of the company, but we had an offer of this type of cover at one place I worked.  The woman I spoke to about it said there was no minimum contract period and, as I wore glasses and had an eye test coming up, it would be worthwhile taking the cover out.  Her suggestion, which I followed, was to have the eye test, purchase and claim back the cost of the glasses, and then cancel the policy.  For the cost of a couple of months premium I saved nearly £400 on the glasses.

I simply used the provider's scheme, within their rules, to my benefit.

Sandtree

These are one of those low cost insurances that basically rely on people forgetting that they have it and renewing forever but with more tactical use can be good value.

Several years ago after having an accident and then regretting my large excess I thought it was about time I looked at the Excess Insurance that I knew both my employer sold and others. I was surprised to read in the wording that it stated the CLAIM must not predate the date of the policy purchase rather than the INCIDENT. Thinking this was a bit of a significant weakness spoke to the CUO of our company about the fact that you could have an incident, then buy the insurance then make a claim off your original insurance and reclaim the excess from this policy and he said he knew and was just awaiting his own claim to go through before he highlighted it to the underwriter at the insurer (so I did quickly register the claim, buy the policy and got my excess back).

I checked again a year or two later, after lapsing the policy, and the wording had been corrected to the incident leading to the claim must not predate the policy.