I had a mysterious text from the NHS recently, confirming my appointment at the local hospital’s trauma department. Mysterious since I hadn’t asked for an appointment or suffered any “trauma” that I could recall.
My wife reminded me that, almost exactly 12 months earlier, I had been referred on from an accident and emergency department having dislocated (and reinserted) a finger (that’s another story).
The appointment itself was a time slot and ended up being one where you take a ticket like an old-fashioned butcher’s, and I was there for a couple of hours between triage, x-ray and final consultation (upshot – bit late now, it is what it is).
This experience highlights a couple of key points (beyond not reinserting your own dislocations): the much-publicised parlous position of the NHS, which is producing strong and increasing interest in private medical policies and should lead to further innovation in this space, and the unexpected but not inconsiderable cost of accidents and minor injuries.
1 in 10 of all hospital visits happen because of an accident, and from those, over 76% of people lose out on workdays
I am lucky enough to have sick pay and a flexible role which allows me to dedicate part of an afternoon to a medical appointment, but for many people this would have a material impact on their income: self-employed manual workers and gig economy workers in particular.
There are also the associated costs to think about: extended childcare, travel and/or parking at the extortionate rates charged at most hospitals to name a few. This would be exacerbated if the injury were less minor than my own.
MetLife UK’s Everyday Risk Report paints a pretty bleak picture of the scale of risk in the UK from accident and illness.
For example between April 2022 and March 2023, 453,000 people were hospitalised for an average of 4.7 days due to a trip of fall.
In fact, 1 in 10 of all hospital visits happen because of an accident, and from those, over 76% of people lose out on workdays.
That something as common as tripping can put people in real hardship should be talked about more often yet 86% of advisers say their clients have no accident cover at all.
Capturing Gen Z with protection? The industry needs to innovate
Some Term policies offer added value benefits such as fracture cover which could mitigate this risk however, as we have seen recently, such non-contractual benefits can be withdrawn at any time, leaving customers vulnerable and advisers with a headache and potentially needing to revisit the recommendation they originally made.
As we evolve the protection market we should not be constrained by historic norms around policy type; nor should distributors be wary of engaging with a wider pool of products and providers.
We are all cognisant of the growing and now cliched protection gap which demonstrates that, as a market, we are not connecting with all areas of our potential customer base as well as we should. Innovate and perhaps more tangible solutions can only help us resolve this particular dislocation.
Phil Jeynes is director of corporate strategy at Reassured
