Health insurance firm nib has raised premiums by an average 9.7% on the back of the rising cost of claims.
In a statement, the firm said: “These reviews ensure that premiums are sufficient to pay current and future claims and appropriately reflect underlying costs.
“The latest review has identified that nib’s claims costs continue to increase. This means we need to make changes to our health insurance premiums. These changes will vary between products, and will impact both current members renewing policies and new policies sold this quarter.”
While existing customers won’t pay more until their policy anniversary, the insurer says premiums included in quotations for prospective new members will be updated from 1 October 2020.
The company says the new rates will be automatically updated in nib illustrations and nibAPPLY. Financial advisers using nib Illustrator and/or Fidelity Life desktop Apollo quoting software, are advised to make sure their quotations incorporate the upcoming premium changes by downloading an update before 30 September 2020.
Quotations dated before 1 October 2020 will be honoured if the application goes into force within 30 days of the quotation date.
nib has released three PDFs to help advisers: