Britain's group risk market is still expanding despite a squeezed economic backdrop, with smaller employers emerging as an unexpected engine of growth, according to Group Risk Development (GRiD), the industry body responding to Swiss Re's Group Watch 2026 report.
Katharine Moxham (pictured above), spokesperson for GRiD, said the resilience reflects how far employer attitudes to the product have shifted. Group risk, she argued, is no longer a back-office insurance line but a frontline tool for managing workforce health.
"Employers want benefits that offer tangible ROI, and group risk has moved from being a reactive financial payout to a proactive health management tool," Moxham said.
The more striking signal in the data, Moxham said, is who is buying. Employers with fewer than 250 staff are driving a growing share of new policies, challenging the long-held view that group risk is the preserve of large corporates.
The shift is structurally consistent with earlier Swiss Re data. Previous editions of Group Watch showed that more than 90% of in-force long-term disability income policies already cover fewer than 250 members – the SME threshold.
In the prior edition, covering 2024 data, total in-force group risk policies rose 3.2% past 91,739, and the number of people insured under group death benefit policies climbed 3.6% to more than 11.4 million.
For smaller employers, Moxham said, the appeal lies in both the financial cover and the embedded services – mental health support, virtual GP access, musculoskeletal care, return-to-work programs – bundled into modern policies. She called group risk "the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way to implement a comprehensive health and wellbeing program for their people."
The growth is playing out against a broader surge in UK workplace health spending. Insurers paid a record £4 billion in health insurance claims in 2024, up 13% year on year, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has reported, with employer-funded schemes covering 4.8 million people – the highest in more than three decades of ABI data.
Research firm Mordor Intelligence has pegged the UK health and medical insurance market at $11.03 billion in 2025, with group and corporate policies accounting for nearly 68% of it.
NHS pressure is amplifying the trend. Diagnostic waiting lists reached 1.7 million people as of April 2025, with more than a fifth waiting six weeks or longer, Mordor Intelligence has noted – a backdrop pushing employers toward faster-access private cover.
Insurers have been repositioning the product accordingly, packaging wellbeing and early-intervention services alongside traditional life, income protection and critical illness cover.
GRiD, which represents insurers, reinsurers and intermediaries, engages government and regulators on legislation affecting the sector and co-developed the industry's professional qualification with the Chartered Insurance Institute.
For Moxham, the direction of travel is clear: as the workplace health conversation evolves, group risk is being pulled closer to the center of it.
