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26 Jul 2016
by Tristram Hawthorn

Can corporate healthcare trusts reduce a corporate tax bill?

According to a 2013 LaingBuisson report, 82% of employees benefiting from UK private medical insurance are covered through employer sponsored schemes. With insurance premium tax now sitting at 10% many employers are investigating corporate healthcare trusts (CHT) as a means to control spend on private medical treatments.

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And this isn’t just the case for large corporates. Many medium-sized employers are deploying through mastertrusts and corporate deductibles.

So, it is easy to see why an employer under continuing pressure to optimise spend on benefits and also embrace health and wellbeing strategies would be attracted by this alternative.

But, there is always a but.

There is a historical myth that CHTs are a complex solution – limiting the logical side-by-side exploration of integrated approaches to addressing employee healthcare needs.

Adrian Humphreys, director of the Group Risk and Health Proposition at JLT Employee Benefits, is fond of reminding me that it is actually possible to implement a CHT in as little as two weeks. Having run the second largest provider of healthcare trusts in the UK for a number of years, Adrian is well positioned to know how straightforward it can be.

If moving to a CHT is now somewhat transactional (i.e. simple), is it a chance to incorporate more as part of the transition?

It doesn’t take many additional steps to join up a CHT implementation with wider employee wellness and rehabilitation initiatives, particularly where corporates embrace the original purpose of providing private medical treatment; it helps maintain the health of many organisations most valuable assets, their people.

By using the right partner, with the latest applications and technology it is possible to include more than private medical elements in CHT’s to reduce IPT, link up with wellness initiatives, the latest health portals and wearable tech, as well as better leverage commercial relationships with traditional health benefit providers. And that’s not all, rehabilitation can also benefit from ring fenced claims funds for employment related illness or injury to reduce the P11d element of CHT provision for employees.

So, when you next review your private medical provision with an aim of achieving IPT savings you can expand your horizons by considering CHTs or simply reviewing your existing CHT structure to leverage this large spend and valuable benefits on behalf of your employees and organisation.

Tristram Hawthorn is principal at JLT Employee Benefits.

This article was provided by JLT Employee Benefits.

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