Issues round NHS ready occasions/service is the important thing cause customers selected to take out non-public medical insurance coverage (PMI), a GlobalData survey has discovered. On the identical time, PMI admissions have risen to 17% above pre-Covid-19 ranges, as NHS ready lists exceed seven million.
GlobalData’s 2025 UK Insurance coverage Client Survey discovered that the main set off for UK customers to buy PMI was concern about NHS ready occasions and repair, cited by 24.8% of respondents. This was adopted by having no particular occasion (13.7%), suggestions from household or mates (10.6%), and worries about their very own well being (9.3%).
In the meantime, Broadstone’s evaluation of the most recent Non-public Healthcare Data Community knowledge exhibits there have been 338,000 PMI-funded admissions within the first half of 2025. That is barely up on the 336,000 recorded in the identical interval of 2024 and marks the best variety of first-half PMI admissions on file. In contrast with pre-pandemic ranges, PMI-funded admissions have grown by almost a fifth, rising 17% from 290,000 within the first half of 2019.
In the meantime, NHS ready lists have expanded from 4.24 million in March 2020 to 7.37 million in June 2025. Though the record seems to have plateaued at round 7.4 million, efforts to cut back the backlog have been sluggish and repeatedly disrupted by industrial motion, hindering progress on the NHS restoration plan.
The mixed findings counsel that insurers are going through a structural, not momentary, shift within the PMI market, with clear strategic implications for product, pricing, and distribution. With nearly 1 / 4 of customers citing concern over NHS ready occasions and repair as their predominant cause for buying PMI, and PMI-funded admissions now 17% above pre-pandemic ranges, insurers ought to plan for sustained increased demand and utilisation slightly than a post-Covid-19 spike.
This creates a possibility to design and promote merchandise that foreground speedy entry to diagnostics and remedy, together with extra reasonably priced or modular choices for price-sensitive people and SMEs. On the identical time, increased claims frequency would require cautious recalibration of pricing, underwriting, and reserving assumptions—supported by stronger claims triage, care navigation, and case administration—in an effort to management prices whereas nonetheless delivering a transparent velocity and repair benefit over the NHS.