NIB Holdings Limited
(ASX:NHF) will increase its premiums by 7.99 per cent, after getting the Federal Government go-ahead.
CEO Mark Fitzgibbon says the increase is necessary to keep pace with the rising cost of providing health care services as well as its contribution to the risk equalisation scheme.
He says NIB paid more than $1 billion in benefits to customers, including risk equalisation in 2013, which was 10 per cent more than the previous year.
Mr Fitzgibbon says a major factor in the premium rise was the health fund’s risk equalisation liability, a system which requires health insurers to share the costs associated with older and chronically ill Australians.
NIB generated a net profit of $67 million in fiscal 2013.
