Medibank Private Ltd

Medibank has well and truly recovered from the cyber attack and is recording policyholder growth, particularly amongst those taking out cover for the first time. Nonetheless, Medibank has new issues it had to address. The company faces intense competition from rivals that offer cheaper policies. There are calls from struggling private hospitals to get insurers (particularly larger, profitable companies) to put more money into the healthcare systems – a potential lose-lose situation for the company because it could lose members in a cost of living crisis. The 2025 collapse of Healthscope showed that the calls private hospitals were struggling were not sensationalists. Medibank agreed to take ‘soft’ steps including out-of-cycle funding for private hospitals operators, but this did not save Healthscope. FY25 saw $8.6bn in total revenue, up 5.2%, and a $618.7m post-tax profit on an underlying basis, up 8.5%. A total of $6.6bn in claims were paid and there was 1.4% growth in net resident policyholders and 3.1% growth in non-resident policy units. For FY26, the company guided to claims per policy unit growth of 2.6-2.9%. But moderating of industry growth was anticipated and policyholder growth would be grown ‘in a disciplined way’.