AXA Health Insurance

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
I was just presented the AXA health insurance concept:

They provide the additional insurance ([half-]private room cover and wellness type cover) and allow you to cherry pick your basic insurance (provider, model, excess) each year based on your needs.

You submit invoices to them and they either pay up if it's additional insurance matter or deal with the compulsory insurer for recovery.

It looks quite attractive. Anyone using it?

2
You can cherry pick your basic insurance every year anyway?

3
Sure, but they have a pretty neat dashboard that allows you to compare providers, models etc and then have them do all the paperwork in the background, plus just dealing with the one provider.

4

What use is that dashboard?

They can’t tell you more than the regulator has given permission to:
https://www.priminfo.admin.ch/de/praemien

5
I’d be careful. By law a basic insurer can not make a profit from selling basic insurance. They make their money from supplementary insurance.

But that limitation wouldn’t apply to a broker, so beware of higher premiums and fees. AXA is not going to do this for nothing. And they may refuse people with existing conditions.

6
Thank you for sharing. Sounds cool and seems to take the hassle out for people like me who are afraid of splitting basic and complementary for the fear of managing different admin processes.

Our broker had talked to us about it but at the time it was for complementary only - need to have a look as this seems a good way.

They are just starting with insurance so I guess they may even be a bit lenient with taking people in, perhaps especially if you buy all insurance from them etc. So may be a good thing.

7
The advantage would be that you select the insurer, model, franchise each year and they change the insurer in the background. You continue to submit all invoices to them so one point of contact.

The supplementary models Im interested in are Flex style cover for hospital stays which allows you to chose semi or fully private room with a fairly substantial co-pay eg 35% of cost upto 4k for private, plus a pretty basic ambulant package. Im not after fully private cover and a host of complementary benefits. For what its worth those packages got good review from the Vemögenzentrum.

8
The premiums are the same as via the insurer directly, so I presume the insurer can pay a broker commission though? In this case AXA seems to be acting like eg Comparis.

9
I‘ve been using it for a couple of years and it‘s very good!

We opted for the “Health Complet” + ”Hospital Flex 1“ options for the whole family and it takes the hassle out of bill submission as it’s all done through the phone app.

Mainly use Health Complet for contact lenses and on a couple of occasions they paid out for complimentary medicine (acupuncture), nutrition related and some treatments abroad that are not covered by the mandatory insurance.

The Hospital Flex we haven’t used so far. It’s an insurance at the end of the day and you can’t predict the future so nice to have the option to upgrade whenever we feel like it rather than have the premium baked in for all hospital visits where by and large it’s not needed.

The complimentary switch service is the cherry on the cake for me. I receive a couple of reminders to compare and I would say their comparison journey is much better than Comparis. Allowing you to also compare for other family members (even other people probably?) who might not have the complimentary insurance with them.

I haven’t switched so far so can’t comment on how effective / trouble free it is. Testing the water this year for 2023 for me alone. I have no doubt it will work just fine.

10
Yes, exactly this.

The complementary "complet" really does need you to max out its use gyms, clubs, glasses etc to be worth it.

11
On this part, they do send out an annual breakdown of what they paid out on vs what was paid for all insured individuals.

Wether it’s worth it or not is an individual decision I suppose.

12
I don't think that you can determine what franchise and model are optimal for you unless you know the effect on the premium. And, personally, I'd hesitate to tell my top-up insurer what invoices I get under the mandatory part as that might negatively affect my attractiveness as a client.

But of course people's mileages and preferences vary

13
Arent the vast majority of people doing that already with a single provider model? It sounds like you actively split the two: Im not sure how many people do that currently.

Or are you talking about other insurance products? In which case, I think yes that should be a consideration possibly.

The insurers all show up with different premiums and you can change the franchise with a slider. You can easily see if your preferred doctor is affiliated to the given insurer and model.

14
I'm talking about mandatory health insurance only, only that is the same product from all insurance companies and as such directly comparable.