Medicash reports £1.3m rise in income

Liverpool-based cash plan provider Medicash has announced that premium income rose £1.3m to reach £25.6m in 2017, which also saw the number of new policies sold reach a record 70,000.

Its annual results also revealed that its total policyholder numbers jumped 13.9% to 227,255.

There was also a financial fillip for the wide range of charities supported by Medicash, based on its 2017 performance.

Over the past 10 years the organisation has donated more than £1m to various charitable causes, with a further £102,000 committed to support such projects in 2017.

But following the success of the business in 2017, the Medicash board decided to donate the full technical account surplus from 2017 to charity.

As a result, £720,000 was made available to Medicash’s Charitable Trust to distribute across a wide range of health and wellbeing-focused charities and projects.

The organisation said it paid 96.6% of all claims received, compared with 96.5% in 2016, and the claims ratio – claims paid vs premiums received – decreased to 75.5%, compared with 79.5% last time.

Commission paid to intermediaries increased from £640,000 in 2016 to £806,000.

Medicash finance director, Andy Roberts, said: “Health cash plans are continuing to grow in popularity among both employees and their employers and we are seeing this reflected in the growth in demand for our products.

“We are delighted to have experienced another year of strong growth and our seventh consecutive year of policyholder growth.”

LaingBuisson’s 2017 Health Cover UK market report revealed there had been year-on-year growth in the corporate funded cash plan market for the past five years, with more than one million people having such a policy paid for by their employer. Medicash now has a 14% share of this market.

Medicash completed a £4m minority investment in UK digital health provider, Salford Quays-based Now Healthcare Group, in June 2017.

Referring to the investment, Mr Roberts said: “After observing the evolution of the healthcare sector, we decided that now was the right time to invest in Now Healthcare Group.

“Demand for virtual GP and tele-pharmacy services is growing faster than ever and Now Healthcare Group is the first and only tele-health company to have its own tele-pharmacy allowing it to process and fulfil medicines for thousands of NHS patients every month.”