My Health Pal

Taking the Leap: From Broker to Business Owner

My role is the SME and Large Corporate Director and company co-founder of My Health Pal. My role is to win business for groups and companies (health insurance) and then I look after those clients each policy year.

I've been in the industry 18 years now both working for the insurer for 9 years and now as a broker for 9 years. In January 2024, one of our clients and close friend of mine, said “would you like to open your own brokerage and give it a go yourselves instead of working for a broker?

Obviously, it was a fantastic idea. The capital was there. So, in April 2024, we decided to launch MyHealthPal, predominantly a medical insurance brokerage for individuals, families, large corporates and SMEs.

Learning to Lead

My business partner, James, and I, are very good at our jobs, which is selling health insurance and looking after clients moving forward. The biggest challenge for us has been becoming company owners with no previous experience of how to run a business.

Having never run a company before, we’ve had to learn how to deal with all the trials and tribulations that come with that. This includes payroll, HMRC, pensions, all the compliance aspects with the FCA and regulators. We had to deal with that ourselves, when previously we used to just turn up for work, do the job and go home at night.

Now we don't. Now we do everything.

We’ve called upon on a lot of people, like Gravitate who have assisted massively in the accounting side, looking after the numbers for us and making sure aren’t going to get into any trouble. There are also our silent directors who mentor us because they are currently directors elsewhere. It’s been a big learning curve but one that has made us stronger and more successful today.

Building from Scratch (without borrowing)

I think we challenged ourselves extensively. We put an initial investment in, which was relatively small considering the industry that we are in, and we literally had nothing - no pipeline, no data, no existing clients - to go out with.

It was literally start from scratch and go for it. And obviously there were sleepless nights. What are we doing? Should we be doing this? Should we just go back to our day job?

But we've built a portfolio now to the point where we've come out of startup mode, and we've done it without loaning any money at all from anywhere.

We've come out the other side, and now we're employing people, we're getting an office, we've got a great portfolio of clients who work with us closely and it keeps growing. We have grown over 400% since year one!

Client Relationships First

My favourite part of the job is looking after the clients.It’s very rewarding. I've made some great relationships.

You're also getting clients from all walks of life,different industries. I could have a petrol station as a client, but I've alsogot large corporate entities in London and a well-known brand to everyone thatI won’t name. Getting to experience all these things, meeting them and gettingto know them is very rewarding.

The Next Stage of Growth

We are now looking at opening an office in Gloucestershire, which is where my business partner is, and we are currently recruiting three or four people this week alone. We've currently got one other employee at the moment, so it's quite a big jump.

Getting an office and three or four more consultants on board is a scary thing for us, but also exciting because what we've done is get ourselves to a point where we've got such a portfolio that we can only manage that now. So, the next bit is getting more people in to go to the next stage of our business venture.

The Changing Benefits Landscape

There are two key areas that attract medical insurance, which is a luxury benefit in the UK. I hate to say it, but the NHS waiting list is the biggest draw.

For businesses, they can get their employees back to work quicker whilst also providing them a private facility, speed of treatment, the nice luxury hospital, and your own private consultant, which is a big thing.

You’re also going to get companies that lose employees to other businesses, their rivals, because they haven’t got the benefits package in place. And that’s not just medical insurance. That's life insurance, income protection, cycle-to-work schemes, cash plans, sometimes even car allowances and stuff like that.

Working with Gravitate

When I first started up the business, we realised we needed some help when it comes to payroll and accounting. We weren't in a position at the beginning to go for a full package. But Gravitate accommodated us straight away by saying that's fine, if we can put a business plan in place. We knew that for the first six months, Gravitate would facilitate payroll, which was a massive help because we'd never done payroll before.

We had a meeting with Gravitate and, after moving from payroll into more accounting services, we started doing our quarterly meetings and tax planning. It's more than just accounting. They've assisted the business. Anytime I've had a query where I've been confused, I ring them and it's been great.

Leo is fantastic. He picks up the phone straight away. If it's daft things like a Xero software issue that I can't reconcile to the right portfolio, he deals with it and puts it into layman's terms for me.

Honest truth, from day one, without accounting from Gravitate, I don't know what we'd be doing right now.

We love working with Matt and the My Health Pal team. Client FD Tom South, Client FC Leo Gabriel, and the wider Gravitate team work in close partnership with clients to help them know their numbers and boost financial resilience.

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