Our Pricing approach

We asked Commercial Director and Co-founder Andy Santoni to explain more – and lift the lid on Equipsme pricing.

What do we mean by ‘responsible’ pricing?

We mean that we don’t believe in heavily discounting new business prices only to then increase them at future renewals, which can sometimes come as a budgeting shock to companies. At the extreme, it may cause a company to abandon health insurance as a benefit altogether.

Our pricing philosophy since we launched the business back in 2018 has been to charge the same cost per plan level to both new and renewal customers.

What do we mean by ‘sustainable’ pricing?

While we don’t have a crystal ball to know what will happen to prices in years to come, we have been proud of our track record so far – since Equipsme launched our most popular plan prices have only increased by an annual average of around 5%.

We believe that stacks up well against other providers’ medical inflation increases. In some cases these will have been two or three times that % or more.

We want that to help companies stay with us and “sustain” the benefit for their employees.

How does Equipsme keep prices down, overall?

Here are some of the key ways:

• Including the wider workforce as part of the membership covered. This helps drive a lower age profile, which in turn is designed to give a wider spread in the risk pool of all members that might claim.
• Excluding high-cost treatment segments. For example, Equipsme does not cover cancer treatment (but does cover up to the point of cancer diagnosis) or psychiatric admissions. Doing so helps reduce the burden of very large, unpredictable costs.
• Simple underwriting and exclusion of 3-year pre-existing conditions. Rather than disregarding medical history (which can store up higher future renewal increases) we support the principle that insurance is about unexpected risk – and so our plans focus on brand new medical conditions.
• Community-rated pricing: One price for all employees aged 16-69, new or renewing customers. This removes a complexity barrier for companies wanting a quote, can ease budgeting, and helps spread the risk of large premium gaps between different age bands.
• Digital and lean administration: By offering an online quote process, simplified setup, and minimal admin for the business, we keep overheads lower and pass on the benefit.

What underwriting advantages are there to whole of or wider workforce cover?

When a business offers cover to the whole workforce or a wide segment of employees (rather than only a small elite group), we believe there are several underwriting and pricing advantages:

• Broader risk pool. A wider cross-section of employees means risk is spread across many people, often reducing the average age profile, and consequently reducing the impact of any one claim or overall frequency.
• Improved engagement and utilisation. When more of the workforce are included, the benefit becomes more normalised, leading to higher usage of services like GP access or physio, which can help catch issues early and potentially reduce larger claims later.
• Broader employee experience and retention. From a business viewpoint, providing benefits for more employees can improve retention and reduce adverse selection (ie, only those likely to claim join). Helping the overall underwriting base remain more balanced.
• Administrative simplicity. Having everyone on similar or unified plans makes administration simpler, reducing cost leakage and complexity, which helps expense management.

So in practice, we believe that choosing to cover the wider workforce helps keep costs more controlled, helps pricing remain stable, and supports the employer in offering a meaningful benefit to more people – that can ultimately help their bottom line via reduced sickness absence.

What will happen to pricing in the future?

We can’t predict the future. The only thing we can say for sure is that as a brand we’re committed to widening the footprint of private health insurance, and to being transparent about our pricing, the content of our plans, when, how and why we make changes.