How much does WPA health insurance cost?

About our data and research

Our team of private healthcare experts regularly obtains quotations from leading private medical insurance providers, including WPA, to build a clear picture of the factors that influence policy costs.

We are completely independent and have no financial ties with the insurers we research. This means the insights we publish are impartial and trustworthy.

The cost of WPA health insurance is influenced by a mix of personal factors and policy choices. Some drivers are outside your control (e.g. age, postcode), while others depend on how you set up your cover (e.g. hospital list, excess, extras).

Personal factors

• Your age - health insurance premiums rise as the likelihood of needing medical treatment increases. Our data shows sharp price increases after you turn 50.
• Where you live - Private treatment costs are often higher in larger cities, particularly London, which makes medical insurance more expensive. Towns and cities with higher claims rates can also push premiums up.
• Your smoker status - If you smoke or vape, you can expect to pay more for your WPA policy, as with other insurers.

Policy choices

How you configure your WPA Complete Health plan will also have a significant impact on price.

• Cover levels - What you want your policy to cover is one of the most significant factors affecting cost that you can control. The more comprehensive your plan, the higher the premium. Later in this guide, we show the typical impact of adding different options to a WPA policy, based on our research.
• Hospital choice - Some private hospitals are more expensive than others, especially those in central London. WPA gives you the option of adding some of these more expensive hospitals to your list of potential treatment centres at an extra cost.
• Your excess - The higher your excess, the lower your premium will usually be. For most people this means striking the right balance between affordable premiums and what you’re able to pay if you need to make a claim.
• No claims discount - Health insurance no claims discounts differ from those on car insurance, as you'll usually start with a sizeable discount on day one. With WPA, you start with a 64% discount which can go up to a maximum of 70% if you don't claim for a couple of years.
• Cancer care - Unlike many other health insurance providers, WPA doesn’t include cancer care as standard. Instead, it allows you to choose whether to add it, giving you greater flexibility.
• Mental health cover - WPA doesn’t include mental health cover as standard but you have the option to add it at an additional cost.
• Dental cover - You have the option of adding cover for dental emergencies and injuries, with some limits, which will slightly increase your premium.
• Cash benefits - Optional cash benefits provide a contribution towards everyday healthcare costs, such as optical treatment or routine dental work. With WPA, you can either exclude this option altogether or choose between two levels of cover, with Level 2 offering higher payouts at a higher premium than Level 1.

You can read more about what WPA health insurance covers in our expert review.

From our extensive pricing analysis, we found that an average WPA basic plan costs £45.08 per month and a comprehensive plan costs £68.68 per month. Overall, the average cost of a WPA health insurance policy is £56.88 per month.

In the following sections, we break this down further by age, location and excess level, so you can see how much impact these factors could have on the price you pay.

One of the most significant factors affecting the price of your WPA health insurance is your age. To illustrate this, we gathered quotes for people aged between 20 and 60 and compared two different cover levels: basic and comprehensive.

What we included in the quotes

Basic cover includes:

• Treatment in a private hospital where you are admitted
• Cancer care (optional, but important to most)
• £250 limit for outpatient consultations (included with all plans)
• No additional options

With a basic level of cover from WPA, bar the small allowance of £250 towards outpatient consultations, you'll need to be diagnosed before using your policy for treatment.

Comprehensive cover includes (in addition to basic):

• £1,000 limit for outpatient consultations
• £1,000 limit for outpatient diagnostic tests
• £1,000 limit for complementary therapies

The biggest difference is that with a comprehensive policy, some or all of the costs of consultations, tests, and scans leading up to a diagnosis are covered.

Expert analysis: WPA offers very competitive pricing for young adults

Like all private health insurers in the UK, WPA’s premiums rise with age, with the steepest increases in pounds and pence after you turn 40. What stands out is how competitively WPA prices its cover for younger adults, often well below that of alternatives such as Bupa, Vitality and others.

Looking at our data, the sharpest percentage jump occurs between ages 20 and 30, where premiums rise by around 81% for both basic and comprehensive cover. The increases are moderate in middle age, with rises of 35% between 30 and 40 and 37% between 40 and 50. From 50 to 60, premiums climb by a further 45%.

In real money terms, the biggest jump comes at the top end of the age scale. For basic cover, premiums increase by around £25 per month between the ages of 50 and 60. For comprehensive cover, the same age gap translates to an increase of nearly £39 per month.

Another significant factor affecting the cost of WPA health insurance is your location. The price of private treatment varies considerably across the UK, and this is reflected in the premiums insurers charge. Alongside hospital costs, factors such as claims volumes in a region also play a part.

How much does WPA health insurance cost in different parts of the UK?

London is generally the most expensive region in the UK to receive private hospital treatment, and it’s not uncommon for providers to set their prices accordingly. WPA is no exception. As the table below shows, the average monthly cost of the same policy in London is substantially higher than in other regions of the UK.

Expert analysis: WPA’s “London Premium” is huge!

For most regions of the UK, WPA’s pricing sits within roughly 10% of the national average, either slightly higher or lower. London, however, sees what can only be described as a whopping hike, with premiums averaging more than 57% above the national figure.

We know from researching private treatment costs that medical care is more expensive in the capital, but not usually by this margin. While we can’t say for certain, it’s likely that other factors, such as claims volumes, are contributing to the scale of the difference.

At the other end of the spectrum, some regions stand out as significantly cheaper. Scotland (-22.61%), North East England (-22.17%), and Yorkshire and the Humber (-17.04%) all come in well below the UK average. Policyholders in these areas therefore pay considerably less for the same level of cover compared with customers elsewhere.

How much does the price differ in the towns and cities we researched?

Within each region we analysed, we collected quotes from 22 different towns and cities to build a more granular view of WPA’s approach to location-based pricing.

The table below lists all of the towns and cities we obtained quotes for, sorted from most to least expensive. It also shows how each compares to the national average.

Expert analysis: Where is WPA medical insurance most and least expensive?

As we know, London is, by some distance, the most expensive city in the UK for WPA health insurance. What’s also clear from the city-level data is that Manchester is noticeably higher too, at around 22% above average, making it the second most expensive location in our research.

Moving down the table, and past the first two, we see that the variation is far smaller. In most towns and cities, such as Nottingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, and Cambridge, prices sit within roughly 10% of the national figure, showing that WPA’s postcode pricing isn’t particularly aggressive across much of the UK.

The real savings come at the bottom end of the table. Leeds (-13.33%) and Exeter (-17.21%) both come in well below average, and the cheapest locations are in Scotland and the North East. Edinburgh (-24.79%), Newcastle (-24.40%), York (-20.75%), Glasgow (-20.43%), and Sunderland (-19.94%) all stand out as extremely competitive, with premiums around 20–25% lower than the UK average.

How your excess affects the cost of WPA health insurance

Your excess is the amount you have to pay towards a claim. Setting a higher excess usually reduces your premium, but the size of the savings depends on your age.

Expert Analysis: Bigger excess, bigger savings - but impact varies with age

As our data shows, setting a higher excess can make a noticeable difference to your WPA health insurance premium. At age 20, for example, choosing a £500 excess instead of none reduces the cost of the policy by around 47%.

At older ages, the percentage saving shrinks, but the actual financial saving grows. A 60-year-old only gets a 16% reduction by opting for a £500 excess versus none, but in real money that adds up to a larger saving than a younger adult would see from their bigger percentage discount.

Your choice of excess level will ultimately depend on your circumstances and what you’ve bought private medical insurance for. If you’re in your 60s and mainly want cover for major treatments, with little or no lower-cost outpatient benefits, a higher excess may be perfectly acceptable. On the other hand, for younger adults, especially those saving for a deposit or managing stretched finances, a large excess might be unrealistic, even if it reduces premiums.

WPA health insurance offers a great deal of flexibility compared to most other UK providers. For example, WPA gives you the option of setting separate limits for outpatient consultations and outpatient diagnostic tests, which is uncommon.

In total there are 11 optional extras you can choose to add to your base policy. It means you have plenty of opportunity to select the cover you want based on your needs and budget.

Each of these optional extras will affect the cost of your WPA policy to varying degrees. Some, such as cover for dental emergencies and injuries, will have little bearing on the overall cost. But things like outpatient cover and cancer care will have a much larger impact on your WPA health insurance premium.

The table below shows how much selected extras increase the cost of a WPA policy, in percentage terms, based on quotes for a 40-year-old living on the South Coast of England.

Expert analysis: Not all benefits are equal

Our research shows that optional benefits affect the cost of WPA health insurance to very different degrees. Outpatient cover has the biggest impact, increasing premiums by around 72%. After that, cancer care and WPA’s Level 2 cash benefits both raise prices by about 44%.

By contrast, several benefits, such as dental care (+3%) and overseas emergency treatment (+5%), make only a modest difference to the overall cost.

Ultimately, the extras you choose will come down to your priorities. But knowing the impact of each option should help you make a more informed decision about which ones are worth paying for.

WPA doesn’t offer a discount for couples, like some providers do; each person pays the same as individual adults, but billed as one. This means the cost for two adults is essentially twice that of an individual of the same age (assuming the same cover options, etc).

The table below shows average prices for WPA health insurance for a couple across all locations and excess levels. For simplicity, we have assumed both partners are the same age.

Expert analysis: No couples discount, but more flexibility

With WPA, there’s no financial benefit to taking out a joint policy. Couples pay the same as two individuals, so the cost simply doubles if you’re the same age. This makes WPA different from some insurers who offer small multi-person discounts.

While you could view this as a disadvantage, another perspective is that it gives you greater flexibility. One partner could join WPA, while the other could choose a different insurer that better suits their needs.

WPA doesn’t offer a family discount, so premiums are simply the combined cost of each person covered. Children are much cheaper to insure than adults, so most of the cost of a family plan comes from the adults.

The table below shows the average combined monthly premium for a 40-year-old couple with one child of different ages. These are based on our dataset using a postcode close to the UK average.

Expert analysis: Children add little cost, until they become adults

Children add relatively little to the cost of a WPA family plan compared with adults. Between ages 1 and 16, the additional cost is only about £6–£20 per month per child. The real change comes at 18, when the child is classed as an adult and premiums rise to £20–£30 per month instead.

How can you reduce the cost of WPA health insurance?

The flexible nature of WPA health insurance gives you several ways to keep premiums down. The most effective methods are:

• Limit your cover options - Selecting fewer extras, or choosing lower benefit limits where these are available, can significantly reduce costs.
• Increase your excess - Opting for a higher excess will lower your monthly premium, but be sure it remains affordable in the event of a claim.
• Check for eligibility discounts - Certain groups qualify for reductions. For example, medical professionals receive a 10% discount on their premium.

Ultimately, the right approach depends on your budget and what you want health insurance to cover. Balancing affordability with the protection you need is key.

How to get a tailored quote for WPA health insurance 

It’s important to remember that the research for this article is based on hundreds of separate quotes for WPA health insurance. And the figures we have quoted are largely based on averages. 

To get a price based on your own circumstances, you would need to go through the online quote process with WPA. Alternatively, you can request a quote from one of our expert health insurance brokers by completing this form.