Financial services organisation BNP Paribas offers its employees a comprehensive array of group risk products.
All the bank’s UK staff get life insurance and the vast majority (80%) receive group income protection, with the exact terms of the cover varying, depending on their preferences and which of the 12 BNP Paribas UK businesses they work for. In addition, around 4,500 of BNP Paribas’ 7,500 UK employees and their children receive personal accident cover; even those not automatically covered can select it as part of their benefits plan. Staff also receive private medical insurance, and can opt for critical illness insurance as a voluntary benefit for them and their families.
Thomas Hiles, BNP Paribas UK’s group benefits manager, believes the take-up of benefits is not necessarily correlated to age. “I did some analysis just over a year ago on differences in ages, job grade and gender. For example, is there a trend that the older you are, the more engaged you are with your pension, etc? I didn’t find that within our company. Something like critical illness cover has a very high take-up, regardless of age,” he says.
Several years ago, the bank built a benefits tool called Right for You, to help its staff to customise the benefits they receive. “It’s an interactive tool where you or I could select what our priorities are right now,” explains Hiles.
He adds: “There’s a list of around 16 [benefits]: everything from starting to a family to moving house to saving for the future, having more fun, getting healthy. Based on the priority, the tool gives them an output. Because we have so many benefits, it condenses it down to what is usually up to 10 benefits that really help that goal.”
Tying all the benefits together in this way helps them come to life for employees, Hiles says. The tool also prompts staff at various life stages. “A life event such as getting married lets [an employee] make changes to certain risk products. If [they] get married, [they] can increase [their] life cover or cover [their] partner, increase critical illness cover or add them to [their] various medical plans,” he explains.
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