WA focus brings healthy reward

A DESIRE to stay a little closer to home led Michael Gurry to a ‘healthier’ job.

Mr Gurry has been with WA health fund HBF for the past five years, initially as group general manager and now as managing director.

Though his working life began in insurance, the bulk of it has been spent in the technology and management consultant arenas.

“Very early in my career I was a trainee actuary with AMP,” Mr Gurry said.

“After that I was with IBM for about seventeen years based in Perth, Sydney and New York. From there I moved to DMR – a major technology consultancy in Australia.”

Mr Gurry managed the Asia Pacific region for DMR and the last four years of which meant travelling four days out of five.

“I decided one day I’d had enough of the travel,” he said.

“I was looking for a management challenge and at that time HBF was looking for a new chief executive.

“When I came into the industry it had suffered about ten years or so of constant membership decline.

“Not long after I joined HBF there was a change of Federal Government.”

Mr Gurry said the change in Federal health policy caused a gradual turnaround in private health fund members.

“In fact, today HBF has more members than it ever had.”

Mr Gurry said despite HBF’s 800,000-plus membership, the decade of decline had shown the fund was ‘in the lap of the gods’ in regards to what government did.

“As a result we’ve diversified to remove that risk,” he said.

“We’ve launched alternative products such as home loans, credit cards and car insurance. Our proportion of government dependant revenue is now much lower.

“As a result we’ve been able to give more value to our members without being as influenced by government decisions.”

HBF is now the third largest health fund in Australia even though its membership is largely WA-based, holding a 75 per cent market share in this state.

It is also the only Australian health fund to gain a Standard & Poors’ A rating.

Part of the fund’s success is historical. It started in 1941 with the amalgamation of a number of small funds.

“In the old days a lot of hospitals such as Royal Perth had their own funds which were amalgamated to form HBF,” Mr Gurry said.

“A lot of people have been members of the fund all their lives.”

Despite the fund’s success, Mr Gurry said there were no plans to move into the eastern states.

“Our corporate philosophy is to provide value to WA members,” he said.

“We do sell some product in the eastern states, such as travel insurance, but that is treated as funds generation for WA members rather than growth for growth sake.

“We do have eastern states members but those are mostly expatriate Western Australians.

Mr Gurry said HBF policies cost up to 40 per cent less than other Australian funds.

“That price difference is partly due to efficiency and we do have a slightly younger age group in WA which can lead to lower claims,” he said.

“We also deliver 95 cents in the dollar to claims.”

Mr Gurry said he believed there would be some consolidation in Australia’s private health market in the next few years.

“There are currently 44 health funds in Australia but eight of them control 90 per cent of the business,” he said.

Mr Gurry believes the industry will also become more complex.

“Historically there were always three products,” he said.

“Today we have combinations of 200 products.”