We’ve delivered a solid result this year and seen momentum return to our business, by focusing on our customers and managing the business well in what has been a challenging year.
We have worked really hard to regain the trust of our customers and while there is more to do, we are growing again.
For the first time in our 47-year history, we have more than 4 million health insurance customers and they are using their cover more than in recent years.
Resident policyholders increased by almost 11,000 with growth from families, younger people and those taking out cover for the first time; and we saw our largest increase in non-resident policyholders in 7 years, with policy units now at almost 275,000.
We’re a resilient organisation with great people. While it’s been a very challenging year, we’ve listened and learnt, and we continue to strengthen our business. We’re in good shape and while we know there is more work to do, our eyes remain firmly focused on the needs of our customers and continuing to improve the way healthcare is delivered in Australia.
Increasing value for our customers
We’ve remained focused on delivering greater value, as households continue to manage cost of living pressures.
Customers saved more than $25 million in out-of-pocket costs through our Members’ Choice Advantage network and we continued to expand our no gap network and Live Better Rewards program. We checked in with almost 600,000 customers to make sure they were on the right cover for their needs, introduced new silver health insurance cover focused on savings and prevention, delivered our lowest average premium increase for 22 years and deferred the increase for two months.
We paid $6 billion in total claims and returned $469 million in COVID give backs, premium deferrals and ahm extras rollover as part of our commitment to not profit from COVID, with our total COVID customer financial support now at around $1.15 billion.
Improving our customer experience
More customers are choosing to use our digital channels as we’ve worked to simplify and improve our digital experience. We integrated our health support programs and added new Live Better functionality into the My Medibank app. We also continued enhancing self-service options across both brands and now almost half of all Medibank service enquiries and two thirds of ahm queries are resolved this way.
Our Live Better vans and kiosks visited 140 regional and rural towns to help thousands of customers with their health and wellbeing needs and we are now trialling new localised approaches in some of our stores to help customers find the right health support they need locally.
Supporting the health and wellbeing of our customers
Our Live Better program is one of the leading health and wellbeing programs in the country, and now boasts around 700,000 members, and more than 16,000 customers enrolled in our preventative health programs this year.
Our Amplar Health homecare team helped more people than ever before, delivering more than 250,000 home visits, while our virtual health teams supported over 1.6 million calls and online interactions with our customers and the community.
We continued to create a more connected, accessible health offering, investing in new care models and working with governments, hospitals and health innovators.
We launched a new joint venture with Aurora Healthcare that gives patients an alternative approach to mental healthcare through a mix of in-hospital and home and community support, with the first of 3 new hospitals - Deakin Private in Canberra - opening this year. As well, our Calvary Medibank joint venture virtual hospital was accredited as one of the first standalone virtual hospitals to deliver hospital-level care – this year supporting more than 5,000 patients through My Home Hospital, which is delivered on behalf of SA Health – saving more than 19,000 hospital bed days.
Delivering for shareholders
Our shareholders will receive a fully franked final ordinary dividend of 8.3 cents per share bringing our total fully franked dividend to 14.6 cents per share.
Key financials
The results reflect strength of our Health Insurance business, strong underlying profit growth of Medibank Health and continued strong capital position. Group operating profit increasing 9% to $647.5 million with net investment income growing significantly to $138.6 million, resulting in a 29.8% increase in net profit after tax of $511.1 million.
For further information please contact:
For media
Emily Ritchie
Hub Lead, External Affairs
+61 429 642 418
emily.ritchie@medibank.com.au
For investors/analysts
Michael Hajdinjak
Hub Lead, Investor Relations
+61 475 038 762
investor.relations@medibank.com.au
For a complete list of all ASX announcements, please visit our Investor Centre.