Earlier in the year, health insurance provider Bupa announced that they would be returning $120 million of customers money in response to the pandemic.
At the time, Emily Amos, Managing Director of Bupa Health Insurance, had said that the decision to return funds was the next step in Bupa’s support for customers who have been impacted by COVID-19.
“We’ve always said we wouldn’t seek to benefit from the COVID pandemic. As we haven’t seen claims return to levels that we originally anticipated, we wanted our customers to share in these savings,” Amos said.
“We know many of our customers and communities have struggled through this time, and we want to support them given the ongoing lockdowns.”
Now, the insurance company is moving forward with the payments and will be providing cash refunds to those who had private health cover with Bupa for a minimum of three months between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021.
Cash payments will range from $15 to $110 depending on the level of coverage you have, with Bupa confirming that the average payment would be around $71.
In communications with customers, Bupa said that payments will be made directly into the customer accounts used to pay for the insurance and that those individuals don’t need to do anything to receive them.
“We are returning savings in the form of a cash payment as we know this gives our customers more choice to use the money in a way that is most valuable to them,” Amos said at the time of the announcement in October.
Communications from Bupa state that “We know that COVID-19 is not behind us yet, and we’re closely monitoring the ongoing impacts across Australia to see what additional customer and community support we can provide”.
The payments are part of a total $315 million package that the insurance company has committed to helping customers during the pandemic. Additional measures include the freezing of insurance premium increases, mental health support benefit increases, and a $50 million financial hardship fee waiver programme which was accessed by 50,000 of their customers.
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