Meanwhile, British Friendly’s Mutual Benefits programme provides a wide range of services including: Health MOTs, Fitbit discounts, wellbeing hub, virtual GP, death benefit, bereavement benefit, health cash plan, will writing service, plus savings on high street shopping, and regular prize draws.
Members are asked to sign up to access the services. To date, almost a fifth (17 per cent) of members have signed up for Mutual Benefits.
“Members are taking advantage of the rewards aspect and proactively making use of physical and mental health services, either via Square Health or via the LifeWorks app.
“So far, 17 per cent of members have signed up for Mutual Benefits.
“We’ve seen an increase in take-up of around 4 per cent on last year.
“We promote the services alongside our annual statements, with newsletters, and as part of the annual review of benefits,” said Emma Thomson at British Friendly.
Cash plan provider Sovereign Health Care last year launched Sovereign Perks, which gives its customers exclusive access to discounts on “shopping type benefits”.
“This supports our desire to interact with customers via digital platforms rather than the old-fashioned letter and associated costs and is only available via our secure customer portal,” says CEO Russ Piper.
“In the first two quarters of 2019, there were around 230 confirmed transactions with cinema tickets, gym membership and airport lounges representing the most used benefits.”
During the same period, the provider paid over 100,000 claims. “The usage compared to traditional benefits is very small at present,” he adds.
Sovereign Health Care also recently launched a telephone and online GP service, together with a private prescription service.
“Our belief is that the GP24 service will add value to customers where accessing their own GP is awkward because of work arrangements or other reasons.
“While we don’t believe these additional services would be a reason to buy a cash plan, they may help retain customers who question the value of the traditional benefits, that is, dental and optical.”
This might indeed ring true if Medical Solutions’ recent research is anything to go by.
The virtual GP provider found that almost a third (31 per cent) of Brits have to wait two weeks or longer for a GP appointment, with 11 per cent saying they have to wait three or more weeks.
It may come as no surprise then that when asked what added-value services they would find most valuable, the majority cited 24/7 unlimited access to a GP consultation by phone or app.
This came alongside physiotherapy and rehabilitation services, which both received an average score of 6.7 out of 10.
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