Accident & Health International (AHI) has announced that it has increased prices across its portfolio by close to 9%.

The price hikes come as medical costs continue to skyrocket and claims increase in both size and frequency.

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Danny Byrnes, CEO of AHI, said that the firm needed to ensure that it was doing business “in a sustainable way.”

“We are currently undergoing a strategic review of our products, policy wordings and processes to improve the value we are offering to brokers and the policyholder. However, pricing and portfolio profitability is a key aspect to ensuring a sustainable future,” Byrnes said. “By taking action on pricing now, we can manage price increases in a measured way that is more manageable for our brokers and customers.”

Price increases will take into account the performance of different lines of business as those areas with higher claims ratios will see larger upticks. Byrnes added that, as the firm has not increased pricing for some years, there has been an upward trend in gross loss ratio.

“Claims are the biggest cost for our business,” Byrnes said. “Over the last three years, we’ve seen an increase in claims frequency of more than 25% and an increase in average claims size of more than 10%.”

Byrnes noted that medical inflation has been pegged at over 8% a year for the last two years, rising above 10% in some countries, which was also taken into account.


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