As costs of having a private medical insurance policy have risen across the majority of health insurance providers, new research has found that a third of companies who currently offer private medical cover for their staff are looking at reviewing their policies. Aon Consultancy, who carried out the study, found that 16 percent of those were considering cash plan private medical insurance as an alternative to their current policies. Cash plan policies are a much more cost effective way of providing health insurance for staff, and is considered one of the top employee benefits available.


Companies are still deciding to take out private medical insurance policies, despite the price increase which Aon Consultancy believe to be up to 9 percent in some cases. This is evidence of the importance that providing good employee benefits are to the running of a company, either big or small, through improving general staff morale for one. The main reasons that the study found for continuing to provide corporate private medical insurance throughout the recession were to make sure that employees returned to work quickly following a bout of illness (53 percent), to provide employee wellbeing as part of their corporate responsibilities (56 percent) and over two thirds of the 653 employers that took part in the study offered PMI as part of a competitive benefits package. As well as this, private medical insurance is one way of attracting a higher calibre of staff so overall productivity could increase and save costs for businesses in the long term.