Personal Group Holdings PLC hails insurance performance during pandemic

What Personal Group does

() specialises in the provision of employee services, including engagement programmes provided to corporate clients for their employees use and insurance products sold directly to client employees.

Insurance products include hospital cash plans, convalescence plans and death benefit, while employee engagement services focus more on salary sacrifice schemes, retail and leisure discounts and rewards, as well as other services like electronic payslips and app push notifications to help communicate with employees.

Personal Group’s business is currently divided into four main segments:

• An insurance business, which provides most of the group’s profits

• Let’s Connect – a service that allows employees to buy home technology through payroll deduction and salary sacrifice

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) business – which includes Hapi, a benefits platform and app, enabling client employees to access their benefits

• Innecto – a pay and reward consultancy that provides support to employers setting up pay and reward schemes for their staff.

How is it doing

In a trading update covering the whole of 2020, the group said that after a solid first-half performance, it continued to trade robustly in the second half of the year during what it described as “a most challenging period”.

Revenues for 2020 are expected to be broadly in line with the year before while adjusted underlying earnings (EBITDA) are expected to be north of £9.5mln, compared to £11.0mln the year before, reflecting a change in revenue mix.

The debt-free group ended the year with around £20mln of cash, up from £17mln a year earlier.

Personal Group said trends in its insurance division, which provides hospital plans and death benefits, have been consistent since the onset of the pandemic, with retention rates for existing policyholders remaining strong.

Claims levels have remained broadly in line with previous years, despite an increase in claims related to the coronavirus (COVID-19).

What the boss says: Deborah Frost, chief executive

“Despite the challenge to our traditional business model, we’ve delivered robust financial results and made clear strategic progress in the period, with a number of key clients wins. In addition, we’ve enhanced our technical and operational capability, setting us up well for rebuilding for the long term,

“We now see organisations appreciating their responsibility for the health and wellbeing of their staff, not just as a method to increase productivity but as a core element of their ESG [environmental, social and governance[ agendas and business resilience”.

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