"Insurers need to understand why the experience isn’t living up to expectations at the point it matters most."
- James Daley - Fairer Finance
Fairer Finance’s latest 'Trust in Private Medical Insurance (PMI) Index' found that consumer trust has reached its highest point in two years.
The independent consumer group's latest polling of 10,000+ PMI customers revealed that trust has risen by 0.86 percentage points since spring 2026, to 59.3%.
This is the highest score since Fairer Finance began tracking trust in autumn 2023, beating the previous high of 58.57% set in autumn 2024, and it follows a year in which trust had started to plateau.
According to the latest data from the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), there were 171,000 insured private hospital admissions in Q1 2026 - a slight decline of 2.6% compared to Q1 2025.
Despite the overall increase in trust, Fairer Finance has found that in every wave since polling began, customers aged 46 to 64 have had the lowest trust of any age group. The gap between this group and the most trusting, those aged 18-30, has grown from 3.6 percentage points in autumn 2023 to 8.7 points today.
According to Fairer Finance, 46-64 is typically the life stage where customers first encounter more complex health needs and higher-value claims, meaning it is where any gap between expectation and experience is felt most acutely.
In addition, the trust gap between vulnerable and non-vulnerable customers had narrowed to 2.81 percentage points in autumn 2025 but has since widened to 5.37 points at 55.99% vs 61.36%, the widest on record.
Nevertheless, claims satisfaction has continued its steady climb, up another 1.42 percentage points in six months to 67.5%, and almost 12 percentage points in three and a half years.
READ MORE: Over 1 in 100 protection applicants disclose weight loss treatment: UnderwriteMe
A good claims experience remains one of the strongest drivers of trust. Customers who have made a claim in the last three years trust their provider far more than those who have not, with a gap of 66.58% vs 54.87%.
Satisfaction with digital customer service and providers' apps, websites and online portals has also risen this wave, which Fairer Finance suggests may point to smoother claims journeys feeding into higher trust.
WPA has returned to the top spot as the most trusted PMI provider, scoring 63.4% despite a small dip. It also leads on claims satisfaction at 71.55%. Notably, AXA Health's trust score rose by 2.71 percentage points and Aviva's by 1.4 points.
"It’s encouraging to see trust in private medical insurance at its highest level since we started measuring it," James Daley, managing director at Fairer Finance, said.
"The claim is the moment of truth for any insurer, and the steady rise in claims satisfaction shows providers are getting better at delivering when it counts.
"But the industry can’t ignore who is being left behind. People in their late forties to mid-sixties are exactly the customers who start leaning on their cover for more complex and expensive treatment, and their trust has barely moved in three years.
"Insurers need to understand why the experience isn’t living up to expectations at the point it matters most.
"The same is true for vulnerable customers, where the gap has opened up again to its widest point yet. Providers have made real progress on digital service and claims; now they need to make sure that progress reaches everyone."
