Medical insurers and renewals

In the good old days one of the insurers I work with (as an independent whole of market healthcare intermediary) would send out the annual renewal terms to me as the broker. I would send it on to the client myself with notes as to the affordability, appropriateness of the cover and so forth. This was usually four to six weeks prior to the renewal date.

As you might imagine this gave me some control over timing and information and in the event of a larger than expected increase on a renewal I could offer the insurers rationale to my client and suggest options without the them having to panic.

Following the introduction of GDPR in 2018 more and more insurers are sending renewal documents direct to the client with the broker copy following either at the same time or even a little later on occasion. In practical terms this has increased my volume of panicky, upset calls and e-mails from clients by 100% (simply didn't have them before this began) and meant that in addition to sending out the renewal in the normal way, as I am required to do by our regulators, I have also had to add in an extra layer of admin to support and resolve clients concerns about their renewals.

The purpose of this post isn't to moan about insurers renewals - as annoying as this might be the insurers are simply trying to process client data properly - but rather to let you all know that it is not the broker who has made this change and in some ways it actually increases the pressure on insurers to reduce their renewal price - historically a calm reasoned e-mail from me in advance, explaining how an increase breaks down was often enough to secure the increase for the insurer at renewal (if I felt it was fair and reasonable to accept of course) but now, having upset the client by sending out the renewal to them first with just figures and no explanation at all even with my viewpoint later clients can be too annoyed to just accept what otherwise might be an appropriate renewal increase and demand a discount or even to move provider. So more pressure on the insurers renewal price to come down and thus lower revenue for their business.

In this respect, changes brought about by GDPR and to insurers renewal process are, I might suggest, a bit of an own goal ?