Sovereign Health Care’s cash plans are there to help individuals financially when they need to access health care. By paying a small amount each month, either on an employer paid or employee paid basis, individuals will get cash back towards treatment they have received. It can help your employees to budget for the everyday costs of health care – cost no longer has to be a reason for delaying treatment.

Our health is the most important thing we will ever possess, although sometimes we only realise this when it has deteriorated. The financial burden associated with everyday health care can often prevent people from having treatment. However having a cash plan in place can help take away that burden and encourage employees to seek treatment early on, resulting in fewer days off work and a happier, healthier workforce.

Plus, providing your employees with access to a Sovereign Health Care cash plan increases the value of your overall staff benefits package, making your organisation more attractive to your staff.

With an employer paid health care cash plan, such as Asset and Merit from Sovereign Health Care, the employer pays the monthly premiums for their employees. They might do this for a variety of reasons ranging from wanting to enhance remuneration packages to helping meet duty of care or DSE requirements. The employee is the policyholder and they can claim back costs they have incurred for a range of benefits up to the policy cover level.

Where a business isn’t in a position to pay for cover, they might still want to give their employees access to a health care benefit. To do this they could link up with Sovereign Health Care and offer access to our Good All Round cash plan on an employee paid basis. Employers can also support their employees by arranging for premiums to be deducted directly from their salary – that way the employee doesn’t have to worry about another Direct Debit.

Premiums paid by the employer are a potential P11D benefit for all directors and employees earning at least £8,500 per annum. The value of benefit is determined by the premiums paid and not the benefits claimed from the cash plan policy. Tax is charged at the normal rate of tax for each individual employee i.e. either basic or higher rate. For example the premium for the Merit cash plan is £56.40 per annum so basic rate tax can be as little as £11.28 per annum or 94p per month, and higher rate tax £22.56 per annum or £1.88 per month. This is based on tax rates of 20% and 40% respectively. Premiums funded by the employer are normally considered as a business expense and this should be confirmed with the local tax office.