The Exeter is a friendly society that was founded in 1927. It was previously known as Exeter Family Friendly until 2015, when the insurer renamed itself following a merger of the Pioneer and Exeter Family brands.
It’s an award-winning provider of a number of protection policies, from Income Protection to Private Health Insurance.
As a mutual society, its members own it. This means it has no obligations to any shareholders.
In 2019, the insurer won the Best Private Medical Insurance award at the Cover Customer Care Awards. At the same awards ceremony, it also won the Customer Service Above and Beyond award.
The Exeter’s Health+ policy has a five star rating from independent financial services ratings firm Defaqto.
Being a Friendly Society with no shareholders to please The Exeter’s focus is solely on doing the best by their members. A five star product with great additional benefits.
Joseph Toft
Health and Wellbeing Expert
Health+ is The Exeter’s sole Health Insurance offering. It previously had two separate policies: a comprehensive Health Cover For Me plan and Health Essentials For Me, a low-cost variant. However, these separate policies were merged and came together as Health+ in 2018.
Core cover on a Health+ policy pays for inpatient treatment, with only very minimal outpatient care as standard. You can add either full or limited outpatient cover to your policy for an additional premium.
Read more about the difference between inpatient and outpatient cover here.
Inpatient and day-patient treatment involves all medical care requiring a hospital bed. This might be overnight (inpatient) or just for the day (day-patient). This most commonly, but not exclusively, involves surgical procedures.
Inpatient and Day-Patient Coverage | |
|---|---|
Hospital treatment | ✅ |
Specialist / consultant fees | ✅ |
Scans | ✅ |
All medical care not requiring a hospital bed. The Exeter Health+ does not include most outpatient care as standard, with the exception of up to three physiotherapy sessions after eligible inpatient surgery.
Otherwise, outpatient care is an optional extra you add to the policy for an additional premium. This provides you with access to:
The Exeter lets you stick with ‘core’ cover only, meaning you get little outpatient cover, to offer Low Cost Health Insurance. Alternatively, you can choose to limit outpatient cover to either £500 or £1,000 per policy year.
However, if you do opt for limited outpatient cover, you can choose another policy option that offers unlimited diagnostic outpatient treatment. This means your policy covers all diagnostic tests / scans in full, with only specialist consultation fees deducted from your chosen outpatient limit.
Cancer cover is one of the most valuable elements of any Private Medical Insurance policy. It pays for diagnosis and treatment of cancer, including offering access to drugs, treatments, therapies and procedures the NHS may not yet offer due to their cost.
The Exeter Health+ covers cancer care in full as standard with no limits in terms of time or cost of treatment.
Cancer Coverage | |
|---|---|
Chemotherapy / radiotherapy | ✅ |
Cancer surgery | ✅ |
Stem cell / bone marrow transplant | ✅ |
Hormone therapy | ✅ |
Monitoring | ✅ |
Preventative treatment / screenings | ❌ |
The Exeter pays in full for palliative care where treatment is designed to control symptoms or relieve pain rather than curing cancer.
The policy also makes a £250 donation to a hospice if you’re admitted following a terminal diagnosis, as well as paying in full for end of life care in a hospital on your chosen hospital list.
Your hospital list impacts which facilities you get private healthcare in and also how much your premiums will be. Some hospitals are more expensive than others, so opting for access to a wider array of private facilities increases premiums.
The Exeter has three tiers of hospital lists to choose from:
View The Exeter’s full hospital list here.
When you apply for Health Insurance as an individual, you choose how you want your insurer to underwrite you.
The Exeter offers two main underwriting options:
These are two very different options which can impact the way your insurer decides on exclusions for any pre-existing conditions you may have. The best underwriting for you depends on your circumstances.
Read more about the difference between full medical underwriting and moratorium underwriting here.
You can also switch to The Exeter’s Health+ policy from another provider. This will need to be on a continued personal medical exclusions (CPME) basis.
Additional benefits that are free with a Health+ policy as standard include:
You can add the following benefits to your policy for an additional premium:
The Exeter Health+ has exclusions that are fairly standard across the market. For example, they include:
The Exeter lets you add an excess to your policy, which is the sum of money you agree to pay upfront towards your private treatment. The higher the excess, the lower your monthly premiums. However, you don’t have to add an excess if you don’t want to. The Exeter offers excesses of:
The Exeter only requires you to pay your excess once per policy year.
Read more about Health Insurance excesses here.
The Exeter offers a fifteen tier no claims discount. At the highest level, this can offer up to 75% off premiums. NHS cash benefits, hospice donations and any claims below your excess do not count as claims for the purposes of your no claims discount.
If you go a year without making a claim, you move up a level. You can also make a claim of up to £300 without impacting your no claims discount — you stick on the same tier if this is the case.
Otherwise, for claims of:
You have the option to protect your no claims discount for an additional premium.
Unlike other providers, The Exeter does not offer the 6 week NHS wait option, which can be a way of keeping costs down by only paying for private inpatient treatment if the NHS wait for that treatment exceeds 6 weeks.
The Exeter’s optional £3,000 and £5,000 excesses are among the industry’s highest.
While they would be expensive to pay upfront if you ever needed to claim, if you can afford to pay them they could help significantly reduce premiums.
The Exeter includes sessions with a speech therapist under its Therapies optional extra. This is fairly unusual in the Private Health Insurance market, where cover for speech therapy is usually extremely limited or non-existent.
The Exeter offers parental accommodation with a child up until they’re 18 if that child is undergoing eligible inpatient surgery. Most insurers have a lower cut off age for this of 15 or 16 years old.
Many Health Insurance providers offer a policy add on whereby you can pay an additional premium and receive cashback for routine dental and optical care. The Exeter does not have this option on its Private Medical Insurance plan.
As you can see, when you’re looking to compare Health Insurance there are lots of points to consider. With so many factors and a lot of different terminology at play, it can be tricky to do an accurate like-for-like comparison between providers.
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We all deserve a first class service when it comes to issues as important as protecting our health. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.
If you are wanting to review an existing health insurance policy or set-up a new plan give us a call on 02074425880 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.