Bonitas maintains its strong financial performance

Bonitas Medical Fund has delivered a strong financial performance more than doubling its year-on- year net surplus to R134m (2012: R65m) during the 2013 financial year.

The scheme’s Principal Executive Officer, Dr Bobby Ramasia said that the “financial statements continue to reflect the Board’s prudent management of the scheme’s finances as evidenced by the sustained strength in our solvency ratio and key indicators.” 

Year-on-year contributions also increased by 20.8% largely due to the impact of Bonitas’ amalgamation with Pro Sano Medical Scheme at the beginning of 2013 and the annual approved benefit cost increase.

The merger increased Bonitas’ membership base by 23,495, which together with 75,563 new membership applications cemented the scheme’s status as the second largest open medical scheme in the country.

Commenting on the merger Ramasia said that apart from substantially increasing the scheme’s size and influence, the amalgamation had not significantly impacted its positive key indicators.

“The merger also allowed us to add the BonClassic option to our product range which will add further impetus to our growth strategies,” he added.

Bonitas continued to perform well with Global Credit Ratings (“GCR”) affirming the scheme’s claims paying ability by awarding an AA- rating and an outlook of “stable.” The rating was achieved based on the merger with Pro Sano, the positive membership age profile, reported net surpluses over the past nine years and the fund’s healthy solvency ratios.

The CGR report also highlighted the Percentage of Risk Benefits Incurred Paid statistic which measures the percentage of risk benefits incurred and paid every year by the respective schemes.

“Bonitas’ performance has consistently remained in the 90th percentile over the past seven years which highlights our concern with ensuring that a high percentage of the risk benefit claims incurred are actually paid out. In other words where the money is really needed,” he said.

The scheme’s accumulated funds expressed as a percentage of gross annual contributions or solvency ratio was a healthy 33,3% (2012:35.5%) which is comfortably above the legislated minimum of 25%.

“Although this represents a decrease of 2.2% over the previous year, this was anticipated as a direct result of the merger with Pro Sano, ” explained Ramasia.

Average net claims per member per month increased by 10.5% year-on-year due largely to the shift in member profile arising from the amalgamation. The average net contribution per member per month also increased with an inflationary adjustment of 4.3% over the previous year.

“This is the first complete financial year with the new board of trustees at the helm. During the period under review we have paid particular attention to excellence in corporate governance and financial management to ensure that we deliver on our core value of offering value-for-money products to our members,” concluded Ramasia.