Who is Equipsme?

At Equipsme, we do business health insurance, with a difference. We think health insurance should be for everyone, not just big businesses, and big budgets.

Find out more about our plans

We launched in 2018 with a mission to make business health insurance simple, practical, and good value for money. Now we help businesses of all sizes take care of their people, cover more of their workforce and employees take care of their health – and their families.

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About our founders

Matthew Reed

Managing Director, Co‑Founder

“Equipsme is about democracy. Everyone should be able to access private healthcare and take charge of their health – not just big businesses and top executives. We wanted to help people take care of themselves, and businesses of all sorts of shapes and sizes take care of their people.”

Matthew ran away to sea at an early age and joined the Royal Navy and ended up working for the United Nations in Sierra Leone. He fell into insurance by accident, and via sales and marketing at Howden Insurance Brokers. Since then he’s had quite a few jobs in general insurance, all focused around SMEs – including as CEO of Powerplace and as part of the team that turned around AXA General Insurance in the UK.

Gavin Shay

Distribution Director and Co‑Founder

“Traditional health insurance products can be complicated, expensive and difficult to understand – let alone USE. For me, affordable, practical, usable health insurance is a way to help people take control of their own health – and a way to help the NHS by allowing resources to be focussed those who really need its support.”

One of Gavin’s first jobs was as an NHS Hospital porter, and he’s been passionate about getting people to the right medical advice and treatment ever since. Gavin went on to cut his teeth in the financial services sector and has more than 20 years sales and service experience. He was previously Head of Partnership Development at AXA Health.

Andy Santoni

Commercial Director and Co‑Founder

“There’s nothing worse than watching someone you love struggle physically or mentally. You want to get them well, fast. That’s why health insurance matters, and why it should be more widely available – and more widely used. And that’s exactly why I’m so proud to be part of Equipsme.”

Regular underwriters don’t join start-ups because they’re built to play it safe, but Andy is not your regular underwriter. Andy is a seasoned insurance and health service specialist, driving underwriting and pricing strategies and developing products for over 20 years. Before founding Equipsme with Matthew, Jaco, Rhonwen and Gavin, he worked as Head of Underwriting and Pricing at AXA Health and prior to that Simplyhealth.

Jaco Rabie

Finance Director and Co‑Founder

“Equipsme put the customer at the heart of its business from day one, and I’ve made sure we’ve done the same every day since. Customer service should always be a higher priority than making money in any industry. If customers are happy, the company WILL make money.”

Jaco qualified as a Chartered Accountant 20 years ago and has a wide range of experience from Cape Town to London, fashion retail to banking, charity to insurance, start-ups to global corporate giants. Before joining Equipsme as a co-founder, he was Financial Director at Bluefin after a 10 year career with AXA UK General Insurance. Mid-life crisis or not, making health insurance accessible to the masses is now his passion!

Rhonwen Beesley

Operations Director and Co‑Founder

“I’m a working mum with two young children and I know how important it is to look after yourself. Fitting your own health into your life can be hard, and that’s where Equipsme comes in. Being able to give employees and their families access to the right medical help and support when they really need it makes me feel that what we are doing with Equipsme is worthwhile.”

Formerly Head of Claims Operations for Xchanging, Rhonwen is the woman in charge of making the Equipsme wheels go round. She has 20 years’ experience in insurance operations across motor, health and general insurance sectors. She’s also a passionate advocate for women’s health, and knows how good, fast support, diagnosis and treatment for women is key in keeping businesses and families healthy, too.

Find out more about our plans

More about buying an Equipsme plan

We don’t sell Equipsme plans directly to individuals, we sell them to UK businesses, through this website, through our fantastic distribution partners, and through brokers.

Equipsme is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as an insurance intermediary, under the name Equipsme Insurance Services Ltd. FCA registered number 786472. We develop our own products with insurers and service partners and will act on behalf of insurers when promoting, selling and administering any insurance benefits in our plans.

We’ll help you decide – but not tell you what to buy. We provide all the key information about what is and isn’t covered by our plans and can answer questions to help businesses decide what they want and need from an employee health insurance and wellbeing plan. We don’t review the whole market, so we can’t give recommendations or advice.

Meet our trusted providers

Whose services make up our award winning and industry leading Equipsme health insurance plans

All of Equipsme’s company health insurance plans are backed and delivered by some of the biggest and most well‑respected organisations in their field, so you really know you’re in safe hands.

AXA Health – one of the UK’s leading health insurance specialists
Health Hero – Europe’s largest digital health provider offering remote access to experienced doctors.
Thriva – forward thinking home based health testing and tracking.
Health Assured – award winning wellbeing services covering mental, physical, financial and legal support.

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