From a business perspective providing medical insurance to your employees has the potential to reduce time off work due to sickness. Loss of work time due to sickness is not only expensive (£588 per employee per year according to the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Market Trends Report in April 2005), it also impacts on team moral and places an additional work load on the remaining team members.
When running a smaller business your success depends greatly on teamwork. It therefore pays to ensure that you and your employees are all performing at their peak. Health insurance can help you to manage employee absence due to ill health and give you access to support throughout the policy year. Health insurance can provide:
• prompt access to diagnosis of health problems
• prompt access to non-emergency treatment
• reduced waiting times, helping to get your employees back to work quickly
• a choice of admission time or date at a convenient time around work and family commitments
• a choice of consultant or hospital
• a highly valued employee benefit, proving useful for employee retention and recruitment as mentioned earlier
You and your employees can also cover family members under the company medical insurance plan. However, it should be noted that, for the purposes of calculating a head count, they only count employees of the company, this is important as there is always a minimum size to corporate schemes.
If your company is subject to corporation tax, health insurance is an allowable business expense. However, directors and employees are liable to tax on the premiums paid on their behalf. Employers’ National Insurance contributions are also payable on the taxable private medical insurance benefits enjoyed by employees in a tax year. There is, of course, no tax on any benefits claimed, provided premiums are paid entirely from company resources.
In summary Private Medical Insurance can be a valuable addition to your companies financial portfolio.
