Private Health Insurance Deals and Tips

WSB

As neither my or my wifes employer have health care schemes, i have private health cover for my family of 4 with Axa.

Every year, even without claims, they bump up the price and i call them and bargain them down.

None of us have any health issues.

I have the excess set up to the max of £500 to bring the premium down but the price despite no claims , it still increases.

Last year £1900. No claims but this year theyre asking £2500.

Just wondered if anyonw has any hints and tips on how to reduce this. 

Thanks in advance

MyRealNameToo

Reduce coverages or limits... dont know Axa's policy specifically but with our insurers you can choose to have access to less hospitals, remove or limit diagnostics, physio, mental health etc. Unfortunately in most cases you probably look at them and think they are exactly the reasons why you want PMI

vldmrs

You’re not alone, this is pretty much the standard PMI experience, sadly.

We were in a very similar boat: family of four, no claims, decent excess, and yet every renewal came through with a chunky increase. Like you, I used to phone up each year, push back a bit, get a “gesture”, and still end up paying more than the year before.

A couple of things I learned along the way:

• Even if you don’t claim, the insurers reprice based on overall costs (private hospitals have put prices up a lot), plus age bands creeping up.

• Having a high excess helps, but once you’re already at £500 there’s not much more to squeeze out of that.

• Negotiating directly with the insurer only really keeps you within their range, they’re never going to suggest another provider who might be cheaper that year.

What actually made the biggest difference for us was stepping back and getting the whole market looked at properly. I resisted doing that for ages because I assumed brokers would just add cost or push one insurer, but that wasn’t the case.

We ended up speaking to an independent broker called WeCovr - just google them. They ran through our AXA cover, compared it against a few others and explained where we were overpaying. In our case, switching made sense and saved a fair chunk without downgrading cover. If it hadn’t made sense, they were quite open about that too.

Since then, renewals have been much less painful because they actually check things each year rather than us just accepting AXA’s increase and haggling.

Not saying switching is always the answer, but if you’ve got no claims and premiums are jumping by £600, it’s definitely worth getting an independent view rather than fighting the same renewal battle every year.

Hope that helps.