+

Group Health Insurance for Mid and Large Corporates

Once your own claims history sets your price, the renewal becomes a negotiation.

Past a certain headcount your premium stops being an actuarial guess about people like your staff and starts being a calculation about your staff. Your claims experience is the number that matters, and once that is true the renewal is a negotiation rather than a quotation.

That changes what a broker is for. Not finding you a plan, which you could do yourself, but arriving at the renewal with your utilisation analysed, your outliers explained and a defensible case for the number you want.

Reading your own claims data

Most corporate plans carry patterns worth finding. Outpatient visits clustered in one location. Pharmacy spend that says something about chronic conditions nobody has addressed. A handful of large claims distorting a loss ratio that is otherwise healthy, which is an argument the insurer will not make on your behalf. We read that data through the year, not in the fortnight before renewal when there is no time left to act on it.

 

Designing cover by grade

Most larger employers tier their benefits, with wider networks, higher limits and stronger maternity and dental cover further up the structure. Done carelessly this creates resentment and awkward conversations. Done properly the tiers follow objective criteria, apply consistently, and give you room to improve someone’s cover as they progress. We design the structure with you and put it in writing, so it holds up when it is questioned.

When your people cross borders

Staff on assignment, senior hires who spend half the year elsewhere, offices in more than one country: a UAE network plan covers none of that properly. International group medical cover follows your people instead of your address, and it can sit above a local plan for selected grades rather than replacing it for everyone. It is the same category as international private medical insurance, arranged on a group basis.

 

The rest of the programme

At this size medical is rarely the whole picture. Group life and group disability and accident usually sit alongside it, and pension and retirement planning deals with the end of service liability accruing quietly in the background. Placing them together gives you one renewal cycle and one team to hold responsible.

phone icon

Get in touch with the expert advisers at Continental

Send us your current schedule of benefits, your headcount by grade and your last two renewal outcomes. Your advisor comes back with what your data is telling you and what we would do about it before the next renewal.

For a corporate programme built on your own numbers, talk to us today.

Enquire

Other employee benefits policies

Group Health Insurance

Group medical cover for UAE employers, from small teams to multi-country headcounts, placed and serviced across leading insurers.

Learn More

Group Health Insurance for SMEs

Group medical cover for small businesses in the UAE, from three employees, compared across the insurers who actually want small groups.

Learn More

Group Life Insurance

Group life cover for UAE employers: a lump sum to an employee’s family, arranged as a multiple of salary across leading insurers.

Learn More

Group Disability and Accident

Group personal accident and disability cover for UAE employers, paying lump sums and replacing income when someone cannot work.

Learn More

Pension and Retirement Planning

Workplace savings and end of service funding for UAE employers, so a long service liability is set aside rather than carried.

Learn More

FAQ

1. How far ahead should we start the renewal?

Three to four months, and earlier for complicated programmes. Anything later and you are accepting a number rather than shaping it, because there is no time to take the account to the market or to act on what the claims data shows.

2. Our premium jumped at the last renewal. Is that normal?

It is common, and it is usually explainable. Large individual claims, a shift in the age profile, medical inflation, or a plan design that quietly encourages utilisation. What matters is whether the increase was justified and whether anyone tested it. We do that testing before the renewal, not after.

3. Can we self-fund part of the programme?

Larger employers sometimes carry a share of the risk rather than insuring all of it, which can work well when claims are stable and predictable. It suits some companies and badly suits others. We will model it honestly, including the year it goes against you.

4. Do wellness programmes actually reduce claims?

Some do, over time, and the effect is easier to see in chronic condition management than in step challenges. We would rather point you at the two or three interventions your own claims data supports than sell you a programme that photographs well.

5. Can one policy cover our offices in several countries?

Often yes, through international group medical cover, though local regulations in each country shape what is possible. Tell us where your people are and we will map what can sit under one programme and what has to be arranged locally.