How We Calculate Your Renewal Premium

What is a renewal premium?

A renewal premium is what you pay to continue your health insurance policy for another policy year.

This post sets out how we calculate your renewal premium, and—just as important—the factors we don’t consider when we make those calculations.

What affects your renewal premium

1/ Your age

Health insurance premiums increase as you get older.

2/ Changes you make to your plan

Your renewal date is a good time to make changes to your plan.

If you want to upgrade your cover (e.g. choose a more comprehensive plan, reduce your excess), then your renewal premium increase will be higher.

If you want to downgrade your cover (e.g. choose a less comprehensive plan, increase your excess), then your renewal premium increase will be lower.

3/ Moving from Hong Kong

If you move from Hong Kong to a different country, your renewal premium will change.

If you move to a country where private healthcare is cheaper, then your renewal premium will be lower.

If you move to a country where private healthcare is more expensive, then your renewal premium will be higher.

4/ Medical-related increases

There are some medical factors we consider when we calculate your renewal premium:

• Inflation – Most countries have suffered from higher general inflation, probably due to fiscal and monetary stimuli following the COVID-19 pandemic. General inflation has been exacerbated by higher energy prices following the war in Ukraine. Inflation in the healthcare sector typically tracks higher than general inflation. This means we’re seeing much higher costs when our members claim for private healthcare, which in turn puts pressure on insurance premiums. Inflation is different from country to country, so this factor doesn’t affect renewal premiums uniformly.
• Cost of new treatments – We’re witnessing a golden age of medicine, with astonishing breakthroughs in gene editing, immunotherapy, and the use of artificial intelligence in an increasingly broad range of treatments. While these breakthroughs improve clinical outcomes for patients, they drive up the costs of treatments. Higher costs mean more expensive claims for health insurance providers. Of course, you can take advantage of many of these breakthroughs with your health insurance policy.
• COVID-19 – There’s evidence that people’s inability to access healthcare and medicine during the pandemic stored up healthcare problems for the future. While routine check-ups weren’t possible and it wasn’t easy for people to seek diagnosis and treatment for symptoms, illnesses could get more serious without treatment. Late diagnosis and treatment are generally more expensive, leading to more complex and more expensive claims for health insurance providers.

5/ Claims you made in the current policy year

Private healthcare is so expensive in Hong Kong that we have no choice but to take into account our your claiming habits when we calculate your renewal premium. We follow these rules when calculating your renewal premium.

This only applies to policies that began before 01 March 2022. If your policy began after this date, we don’t take your claims into account when we calculate your renewal premium.

Certain members who’ve been with William Russell for many years may have the no-claim incentive on their policy, which is discontinued for new members. If you have the no-claims incentive, your policy will lose the discount if you make certain claims.

What doesn’t affect your renewal premium

Knowing what doesn’t affect your renewal premium for health insurance can help put your mind to rest.

1/ Your state of health

Your current state of health has no bearing on your renewal premium. We won’t, for example, increase your renewal premium if your health has deteriorated or you are midway treatment for a serious medical condition.