"Private medical insurers still have work to do to ensure that customers understand exactly what is and isn’t covered"
- James Daley - Fairer Finance
Fairer Finance’s latest Trust in PMI Index has revealed that consumer trust in private medical insurance (PMI) has remained mostly stable, edging down by 0.11 percentage points since the autumn of 2025 and sitting at approximately 58.5%.
The Spring 2026 Index is based on Fairer Finance's polling of over 10,000 PMI customers, and its findings broadly reflect levels seen since the Index high of 58.57% in autumn 2024.
Freedom Health Insurance held the highest trust score in the spring 2026 wave despite a fall of 4.36 percentage points from autumn 2025, and Vitality recorded the largest increase in trust of any provider, with scores rising 2.3 percentage points.
Overall, the findings suggest the sector has plateaued when it comes to trust, with scores showing little movement over the past 18 months.
Nevertheless, claims satisfaction has continued to rise, increasing by 1.23 percentage points in the latest wave to reach 66.08%, and by more than 10 percentage points over the past three years.
Looking more closely at claims satisfaction by age, Fairer Finance found that policyholders aged 46-64 years have the lowest claims satisfaction scores, suggesting there may be some level of shock when they begin to use the policy more.
However, the data shows that good claims experience is one of the strongest drivers of trust in the sector. Customers who have made a claim in the last three years record trust scores almost 12 percentage points higher than those who have not.
Aviva recorded the highest trust score among customers who have made a recent claim (69.34%). AXA Health showed the largest gap between claimants and non-claimants, with trust scores for those who have claimed running more than 15 percentage points higher. Saga was the only provider in the market where this gap moved in the opposite direction.
Fairer Finance also tracks customer satisfaction with perceived value for money, showing that scores have risen from 44.22% in autumn 2023 to 47.2% in spring 2026, but the latest wave is the first to record a dip, providing a potential reason as to why trust levels have hit a plateau.
It was also revealed that value for money scores decline steadily with age, with the gap between the youngest and oldest consumer groups at almost 19 percentage points, from 56.5% among 18-30-year-olds to 37.6% among over-65s, which could reflect the impact of rising premiums on older policyholders.
Value for money and trust show a correlation of around 58%, indicating that perceptions of value play a role alongside claims experience in shaping overall confidence in the market. If customers feel premiums are rising faster than benefits, improvements in claims handling alone may not be sufficient to lift trust.
READ MORE: No claims discounts: the transparency trap undermining PMI trust
"The sustained rise in claims satisfaction is genuinely encouraging, particularly at a time when the sector has been growing," James Daley, managing director of Fairer Finance, said. "However, a deeper look at the data shows that claims satisfaction falls markedly among customers in the 46-64 age bracket, with many not testing the limitations of their policies until they get more complex medical problems in mid-life.
"Private medical insurers still have work to do to ensure that customers understand exactly what is and isn’t covered – and also have a clearer idea of how premiums will rise as they reach the time in their life where they’re most likely to need to claim."
