We stand for great governance

Our stakeholders are important to us – they are the reason we exist and why we govern ourselves in a responsible way.

As a financially regulated business and the UK’s leading health and dental plan provider, we take our responsibilities seriously. We align all our decision-making to the vision, values and purpose of our business.

Most importantly, we reflect on the issues that are important to our stakeholders, and regularly engage with them to understand their views and needs, and our overall impact and outcomes.

Our stakeholders

Delivering our purpose of improving access to healthcare for all in the UK means we consider and prioritise the following stakeholders:

Customers

Direct customers
Healthcare practitioners
Corporate customers and brokers
Voting members

Communities

Charities and community groups
Wider environment
Regulators
Partners and investees
(commercial or distribution)
Suppliers

Colleagues

Current colleagues
Future colleagues

For more information about how we consider and engage with our stakeholders throughout the year, please read our Section 172(1) statement in our 2022 Annual Report.

Read our 2022 Annual Report

How we govern ourselves responsibly

People smiling in the crowd at a conference

We’re a Company limited by guarantee, without shareholders

Simplyhealth has neither shareholders, nor a requirement to distribute profits to our members. That’s why the roles of our voting members (customers) and our Board are particularly important in ‘how’ we run our business.

Voting members

We have 410 voting members, who help to hold our business accountable for the delivery of our vision, values, purpose, business plan and performance.

Through our Annual General Meeting (AGM) we share our progress and invite questions and feedback. Our Executive Committee also make themselves available at the event and throughout the year, to meet informally with our voting members.

Our Board

Our Board is responsible for ensuring Simplyhealth is successful for the benefit of our stakeholders, setting our strategic direction, providing entrepreneurial leadership and overseeing the effective management of key risks faced by our business.

This also includes overseeing financial control, including investments and capital adequacy. Our Board regularly assesses and reviews the ethical and economic position and changing factors.

You can learn more about our Board and their roles and responsibilities in our 2022 Annual Report.

Did you know?

Simplyhealth is a trading name of Simplyhealth Access, which is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Find out more here.

We regularly scan the regulatory landscape to ensure we are doing the right thing and acting with integrity. We are a modern corporate citizen and proactively apply all relevant legal, regulatory, environmental and ethical practices as part of how we simply do business.

How we manage risk responsibly

Our approach

We adopt a responsible and balanced approach to risk-taking so that significant risks are identified and managed. This supports our long-term sustainability and growth and enables us to respond dynamically to new customer needs and strategic opportunities. We consider four principal risks: Strategic risk; Financial risk; Operational risk; and Regulatory and Conduct risk.

Managing our risks

Our approach to risk management consists of:

Agreement of Board risk appetite statements relating to defined risks – the levels of risk we will accept
A risk management system – to help identify, assess, mitigate
Regularly risk monitoring and reporting – helping different functions and teams to assess, report and action plan
An effective risk and control culture – we ensure all colleagues are risk aware and understand how to behave ethically

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Enterprise Risk Management framework:

Identity > Assess > Mitigate > Monitor > Report

Risk – everyone’s responsibility

Our Internal Control Framework sets out a suite of critical controls that support our business in its day-to-day operation. We oversee this suite of controls through a ‘three lines of defence’ model.

It makes clear all aspects of ownership and accountability, ensuring everyone understands their role and responsibility to help our business operate effectively, within our regulatory environment and with our values and purpose front and centre.

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Internal Control Framework:

First line = Daily risk management and ownership of business practices
Second line = Monitoring and reporting (risk and compliance)
Third line = Internal audit

Climate-related risks

As part of our overall risk profile we consider the environment in which Simplyhealth does business; in particular, competitor activity in the healthcare market, the changing health needs and claiming behaviour of our customers and climate-related changes.

In our 2022 Annual Report, we provide our first voluntary disclosure in line with the requirements of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). We recognise these new regulations form part of the concerted effort from the government, regulators and businesses to deliver on the government’s Net Zero strategy and we welcome and support their recommendations.

Our approach to the environment

How we invest, partner, and procure responsibly

Our approach

We are a purpose-driven organisation with over 150 years of heritage working to improve the health of the UK. This means we take where and how we invest, and who we partner with very seriously.

We proactively seek out relationships with like-minded organisations who can also support our stakeholders in a responsible way, and share our goal of making healthcare easier and affordable.

Man smiling and pointing at a whiteboard

Our investment portfolio

In 2022, Simplyhealth’s investment portfolio totalled £177.8m. This is split with 50% in a low-risk credit portfolio and 50% in a pooled diversified credit fund.

Both Investment Managers have ESG considerations as part of their investment decision-making criteria. This means we invest ethically and responsibly.

For more detail about all aspects of our investments, please read our latest Annual Report.

Our partnerships and investments

In 2022, Simplyhealth set up a £60m Venture Capital fund to invest in and support digital health technology, alongside the creation of Simplyhealth Foundry where we are developing new health businesses ourselves.

ESG considerations are built into our search, due diligence, selection, design and delivery criteria. This allows us to prioritise working with and building businesses that prioritise people and the planet, over profit.

Our supply chain

Within Simplyhealth we have a Procurement team who work tirelessly to ensure the goods or services we purchase are, where possible, ethically sourced, sustainable and from supply partners who are socially responsible, including compliance with:

Our Supplier Code of Conduct – our purpose and value-driven beliefs
The Anti Bribery Act
The Modern Slavery Act
Outsourcing Regulatory requirements
Avoidance and declaration of any conflict of interest

We’ve always proactively sought and prioritised relationships with like-minded responsible organisations, most recently, through the B Corp community since Simplyhealth became B Corp certified in 2022.

Our governance-related achievements so far

We’ve been introducing new policies, processes and practices over recent years to deliver better health outcomes for all stakeholders:

Customers

Introducing Poly AI to improve the speed of access to our services, including out of hours support for simple queries (May 2023)
Our 24/7 video GP service launches to support customers with quick and easy access to healthcare (March 2020)
£2m of PPE provided to dentists as part of a support package during Covid to enable them to see dental patients (April 2020)
£9m of excess profits returned to customers following Covid pandemic, as part of £18m total support package (Jan 2022)
First digital-only 1-2-3 proposition launch to customers to enable them to access healthcare quickly (Aug 2022)

Communities

New Compliance Hub launched (April 2019)
Riskonnect and new Performance & Government Framework introduced helping us to track and manage risks facing our business and stakeholders (March 2022)
Ukraine crisis support package launched with £150k donation (March 2022)
Achieved Top 5 ‘Fastest Payer’ at the Good Business Pays Awards because we support our suppliers, paying at speed (Nov 2022)

Colleagues

Chatterbox, a colleague engagement survey, launched to listen to colleagues and their views for improvements in the workplace (June 2019)
New Energise You (now All Together Healthier) wellbeing programme was launched to support colleagues annually with their health priorities (Sept 2020)
A New Smart Working approach was created for colleagues providing greater flexibility for where and how colleagues do their best work (July 2021)
Cost of living colleague support including becoming an above London Living Wage employer (Nov 2022)

Want to find out more?

For more about the way we govern ourselves, our progress, our goals for the future and our next steps, please email our ESG team by contacting [email protected].

You can also stay up to date by following us on our social channels for all the latest updates, stories and news relating to our sustainability progress.