Aviva makes PMI pledge

To customers during COVID-19

Aviva makes PMI pledge
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PMI customers struggling financially can defer premiums for three months during pandemic

Aviva has made a COVID-19 pledge to support private medical insurance (PMI) customers during the crisis.

It said: "We understand that many of our customers are facing challenges as a result of the exceptional circumstances arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and we have been working hard to develop our COVID-19 pledge, which offers our customers additional clarity and reassurance during this time."

While the terms and conditions of its private PMI policies have not changed, the COVID-19 pandemic has restricted the availability of private treatment. However, customers' cover will still apply if treatment is available privately, Aviva said.

The health insurer has introduced the option for customers struggling financially due to COVID-19 to defer their premiums for up to three months. "Customers will need to pay back the premium when the deferral period ends," Aviva said.

For SME and individual business, it said: "We appreciate that treatment may be delayed as a result of COVID-19 and this may result in overall claims costs being lower than expected in the short-term. However, we expect treatment to be delayed rather than cancelled and we anticipate overall claims costs subsequently to be higher. We would expect the period of lower claims to be broadly offset by the period of higher claims."

Aviva added that if PMI claims to Aviva are lower than expected during 2020 and 2021, it will return the difference to UK PMI policyholders.

For large corporate PMI and healthcare trust clients, it said: "We are seeking to apply similar principles, but due to the complex nature of our corporate health products, our approach will vary on a case-by-case basis. This will naturally need to differ across fully insured, corporate excess and trust schemes given the differing nature in the way each type of policy operates."

It added: "As our understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis becomes clearer, we will provide further details on how we intend to deliver our pledge for our UK PMI customers."

Back to business

With the NHS announcing on 28 April that restoration of some services would start to take place across the UK on a localised basis, Aviva said it anticipates that private hospitals can start to support non-urgent procedures, which had previously been deferred.

Aviva said it expects that private resources will be aligned to providing critical care such as cancer treatments, to both private and NHS patients. "This means that PMI customers may experience longer waiting times for some non-urgent treatment during this time," it said.

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