{"id":55419,"date":"2026-04-25T07:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T07:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/55419\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T07:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T07:26:19","slug":"employers-ni-increase-slowing-group-risk-growth-swiss-re","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/55419\/","title":{"rendered":"Employers’ NI increase slowing group risk growth: Swiss Re"},"content":{"rendered":"

The report detailed that the number of in-force group risk policies in the UK grew to 96,006, a 1.4% increase year-on-year.<\/p>\n

The growth, however, represented a downturn from 2024’s figure, which saw 3.2% growth compared to 2023.<\/p>\n

The total number of people insured under group risk policies, according to Swiss Re, grew by 3.5% to just over 16 million, with total in-force premiums seeing a growth of 2%.<\/p>\n

Changes to employers’ NI were announced during the Autumn Budget 2024, it saw rates grow to 15% for employers, whilst lowering the threshold at which they are required to pay.<\/a><\/p>\n

The hike of 1.2 percentage points is accompanied by a change in the threshold at which employers pay NI, it will drop from \u00a39,100 a year to \u00a35,000.<\/a><\/p>\n

Keith Williams, head of group risk UKI, Swiss Re, said: ” We saw a discernible change as employers were forced to pivot away from using benefits for talent attraction, focusing instead on cost control and productivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It is a challenging environment for businesses, but the fact that the total number of people insured across the market still grew by 3.5% demonstrates the underlying value that both employers and employees continue to place on group risk protection.”<\/p>\n

The report broke down growth among product types, those insured under group death benefit and critical illness policies both grew by 6.5% year-on year. Those under long-term disability also grew by 2.6%.<\/p>\n

Ron Wheatcroft, technical manager, L&H UKI, Swiss Re, said: “The 2026 data show clear structural changes as employers navigate affordability constraints, most notably the increasing trend toward shorter benefit payment periods in long-term disability income cover and the growth in CI cover which is largely member-paid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those under a registered group life policy fell by 1.8% in 2025, however membership of excepted group life policies saw a sharp increase of 27.3% year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Wheatcroft said: “This sharp increase means the market cost for trustees assessing potential periodic tax liabilities on the trusts holding these policies is also rising, reinforcing our call for the Government to exempt trusts holding pure protection policies from tax.”<\/p>\n

Each policy-type covered in the report showed growth in the small-and-medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, with long-term disability income having 90.5% of its in-force policies for firms of 249 people or less.<\/p>\n

Katharine Moxham, spokesperson, GRiD, said: “It’s particularly pleasing to see the growth in the number of policies held by SMEs (employers with fewer than 250 employees) which debunks the myth that these are benefits only provided by larger employers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Smaller employers also value both the financial protection and the breadth of health and wellbeing support embedded in our products. In fact, and particularly for smaller employers, taking out a group risk policy is the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way to implement a comprehensive health and wellbeing programme for their people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The report detailed that the number of in-force group risk policies in the UK grew to 96,006, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31069,31071,31076,31077,31070,21227,31072,31068,31075,31073,31074,21838,41,9465,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-55419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-autumn-budget-2024","9":"tag-critical-illness","10":"tag-employee-benefits","11":"tag-employer-nic","12":"tag-employers-ni","13":"tag-grid","14":"tag-group-life","15":"tag-group-risk","16":"tag-katharine-moxham","17":"tag-keith-williams","18":"tag-ron-wheatcroft","19":"tag-smes","20":"tag-swiss","21":"tag-swiss-re","22":"tag-switzerland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116464162417386440","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}