40 1GM Tuesday September 15 2020 | the times
Business
part-time and bank staff, said that
Personal’s policies were relevant for its
employees. The insurer, which is based
in Buckinghamshire, tries to offer as
wide a range of benefits as it can.
Sunrise pays about £6 a head to give
staff access to policies.
“That allows us to tailor it, so each
can have their own, low-cost offerThe increased focus on health is likely
Care home workers, delivery drivers
and food manufacturing staff have
rarely been in the spotlight as they are
now. They have been on the front line
during the pandemic, risking their
health for low wages and — at best —
limited benefits. In future, however,
they may get a little more, not necessa-
rily in the form of a pay rise but in
benefits ranging from life insurance
and sick pay to online access to doctors,
perks previously the preserve of those
on higher salaries.
According to Personal Group, a spe-
cialist insurer, the focus on key workers,
plus the value now being put on health
and welfare, is likely to prompt
companies to offer benefits
to workers on lower pay
and even to those on
temporary contracts,
particularly as busi-
nesses cut per-
manent jobs in the
teeth of a Covid-19
downturn.
Before the pan-
demic struck in the
spring, more than
five million people
were in low-paid, inse-
cure work, according to
research by the Living WageLow-paid gain access
to company benefits
Katherine Griffiths Foundation and the New Economics
Foundation. The sectors with the larg-
est number of workers in this group
were wholesale, retail, car repair and
health and social work. About 1.3 mil-
lion were key workers. Two million
were parents. The think tanks predict
that the headline five million figure will
rise quickly in a recession.
Personal Group specialises in provid-
ing low-cost insurance coverage. It has
130,000 policyholders with 250,000
policies and is in discussion with a
range of businesses about staff cover-
age. One example is a death benefit of
between £10,000 and £20,000 that can
be bought for £2 to £3 a week.
“If a family gets behind on rent or
mortgage, they could lose the
house. If the worst hap-
pens, you get a breath-
ing space,” Deborah
Frost, Personal’s
chief executive,
said.
Many insurers
provide benefit
packages for
workforces, but
Personal’s ap-
proach is to tailor
affordable, simple
products to busi-
nesses with low-in-
come employees. Policiesare described more simply, so that “life
insurance” is called “death benefit”, as it
pays out when the policyholder dies.
The insurer does a deal with an
employer, which pays a small amount
per head for employees to have access
to policies and can then talk directly to
staff. That tends to be appreciated by
employees who do not usually buy
financial products online and who
often have lower educational attain-
ment, Ms Frost said.
The Covid-19 outbreak has high-
lighted the limitations of state benefits
and the fact that, with statutory sick pay
at only £95.85 a week, some people who
were unwell or who shared a household
with someone suffering symptoms of
the virus kept going into work because
they could not afford to be off, poten-
tially endangering others.
Unions have used the outcry to force
better deals for some care workers, for
example, but the problem remains of
people on lower pay having to make
difficult and perhaps unaffordable
choices about their health. “If you have
a mammogram, that is a tenth of your
wage gone if you have to take a morning
to go to hospital,” Ms Frost said. “People
in these situations are tempted to
neglect their health.”
Ally Fisk, head of human resources at
Sunrise Senior Living, which runs 46
care homes and has 5,000 full-time,to prompt
enefits
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send Costain
to £92m loss
Robert Lea Industrial Editor
The cost of falling out with the Welsh
government and National Grid over
two big projects has sent Costain spin-
ning to a £92 million loss.
The construction group had warned
previously that losses over a con-
tractual dispute on the A465 Heads of
the Valleys road in south Wales and a
gas facility in Cambridgeshire would
wipe out more than two years of aver-
age profits.
In the spring Costain raised £93 mil-
lion from shareholders. That has effec-
tively gone to the Welsh government —
where the road project is four years late
and £100 million above budget — and
to National Grid, the power trans-
mission network, in compensation pay-
ments or foregone revenues.
After taking charges in the accounts
for the six months to June 30, Costain
reported a £92 million half-year loss. It
reported that underlying profits had
plunged by 80 per cent to £3.8 million
on revenues off 8 per cent at £548 mil-
lion. In 2019 it reported underlying pre-
tax profits of £34 million on revenues of
£1.1 billion.
Alex Vaughan, 50, chief executive,
sought to ease investors’ concerns by
saying that Costain would be at the
centre of government infrastructure
spending, although the shares fell by
3½p, or 7.4 per cent, to 43¾p yesterday.
Earlier in the year, they were at 195p.