7) No Claims Discount

No claims discount enables people who do not make claims on their health insurance to pay smaller premiums. For each year that you do not make a claim you are rewarded by lower premiums.

It is a controversial area and many private health insurance companies are opposed to it on ethical grounds. The argument is that it may stop people claiming when they need to for fear of loosing their no claims discount.

Another argument against no claims discount policies is that the information provided about possible premium savings are misleading. Often no claims discount policies are more expensive at the zero rating than their counterparts policies that do not offer no claims discounts. It is important to check this out. Additionally if you do make a claim you may have to pay a surcharge and your monthly premium may shoot up and be higher than when you first took out the policy.

AXA PPP Healthcare and Standard Life Healthcare offer no claims discount policies.

All Standard Life Policies have a no claims discount and do not offer their policies without this option. AXA PPP Healthcare's policies give you the option of a no claims discount policy or not.

Standard Life
Standard Life claim that you can get up to a 50% reduction on all their policies with your no claims discount. If you do need to make a claim you do back two years per claim and can then build your no claims discount back up from there. They give you a starter discount of 35% when you take up one of their policies.

With Standard Life some things do not affect your no claims discount.

'such as if you receive cash for staying in an NHS hospital, claim on the travel or add-on element of a policy, make calls to the GP Advice Line, or use any other free service provided under Healthy Rewards.'

The discounts are as follows:

Level 0 - 0% discount
Level 1 - 10% discount
Level 2 - 20% discount
Level 3 - 25% discount
Level 4 -30% discount
Level 5 - 35% discount
Level 6 - 40% discount
Level 7 - 45% discount
Level 8 - 50% discount


AXA PPP Healthcare
AXA PPP offer no claims discount policies and their discounts vary slightly from Standard Life:

Level 0 - 0% discount
Level 1 - 10% discount
Level 2 - 20% discount
Level 3 - 27.5% discount
Level 4 -35% discount
Level 5 - 40% discount
Level 6 - 45% discount
Level 7 - 50% discount

If you make one or more claims with this company you go down by three discount levels and claims for the same medical condition are treated as one as long as they are within 180 days of each other.

In Standard Life's literature they say that it might be better for their customers to pay for small bills themselves rather than go through the insurance and loose the no claims bonus. They iterate:

'However, your first consideration should always be ensuring that you receive the treatment you need.'

They do offer no claims protection for a further fee to some customers however even with this your discount level will still drop by one level should you need to make a claim and the protection will be removed should you make claims in two consecutive years out of three.

Standard Life also allow you to reinburse them the money you have paid for a claim in order to preserve your no claims bonus as long as you do it within 30 days of the policy renewal date.