Meet Sovereign Health Care's new boss who plans to move the firm 'from 1995 to 2030' in six months

Since joining the Shipley-based firm in September last year, the former head of products at Benenden Health in York has been on a mission to make Sovereign Health Care a more ambitious forward-thinking business in everything it does.

Speaking on a video call from his home in York, the Aberdeenshire-born father-of-three says: “Russ (Piper, the previous chief executive) left the business as a platform where somebody could come in and create a step change in how we do things.

"Digital is a big focus. There’s a lot of legacy system in the business that need to change. Historically that would have been a hard grind but we’re going to do it fast. I genuinely think that by quarter one next year, we’ll have gone from 1995 to 2030 in a jump. I think it will really surprise people.”

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Helping staff to embrace those changes is a huge challenge but one that McCallum says is ‘good fun’. "There’s a lady who’s been here for 40 years and she’s at the forefront of our digitisation journey,” he says.

"She’s working on AI-driven projects to improve our processes and make them faster. It’s fantastic and very inspiring.”

Sovereign currently pays customer claims within three days but with the new technology McCallum says it could have the capability of processing claims within three or four hours.

“Cash plan customers are well-served by traditional businesses – they’re not well-served by modern businesses – and that’s where we can be different,” he says.

McCallum is also keeping an eye on how AI could drive down healthcare costs.

"We’re a low cost health care provider,” he says. “AI is going to bring down the costs of a lot of quality health care and we need to be looking at how it’s going to make it more affordable and accessible and make sure we’re at the front of the queue.

"We’re talking to different sorts of new businesses about how they’re using AI alorithmic learning to look at different technology solutions for healthcare. We’re looking at them from both a customer point of view and also whether we can partner with those businesses to help us diversify.”

Sovereign Health Care, which was founded in 1873 to provide local workers with healthcare in the days before the NHS, provides health cash plans for customers to help cover the costs of everyday treatment such as dental care, eye tests and physiotherapy.

The company has about 67,000 customers, and works both with businesses and individual members. Premium income is just under £10m and it paid out just under £8m in claims last year.

McCallum, 45, had been working at Benenden Health for 10 years when the opportunity arose to lead Sovereign and he says he couldn’t turn it down.

Sovereign was looking for a new chief executive after Russ Piper, who led the organisation for 14 years, decided to retire and McCallum jumped at the chance to take his innovation experience to a new business.

"I remember thinking ‘if this doesn’t come off, I’m going to be so depressed for a long time,” he says.

The move from Benenden, which employs 350 people, to Sovereign, which has 45 staff, has involved a significant culture shift for McCallum. “Benenden wasn’t a big company by any stretch but it’s considerably bigger than Sovereign,” he says.

“Coming to Sovereign there’s a shift in the ability to do things at speed. You want to do 10 things and think ‘great, let’s get on with it’ and then you quickly realise ‘hang on, we don’t have enough people to do those things’ so you have to make serious choices about what you concentrate on.”

He adds: “There’s a lot of change happening and sometimes I sit back and think it doesn’t feel quick enough but then I listen to the team and they say ‘gosh, there’s a lot going on Neil’ and I have to balance that with the recognition that we’re a small business with 45 members of staff and there’s only so much we can do.”

Price rises have been something that McCallum has implemented over the last few months with increases between seven and 15 per cent, depending on the level of plan.

McCallum says it had been several years since the last increase and it was something he couldn’t postpone any longer. “We’re not a business that likes doing price rise. It’s hard work, it’s not the right message for customers and we worry that they’ll move elsewhere,” he says.

"We haven’t really seen that this time and that probably reflects their recognition of the type of business we are – a not-for-profit business that wants to give something back.”

With almost 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry, McCallum started his career at Royal Bank of Scotland and spent seven years at insurance broker, Equity Direct Broking Limited (EDBL) before joining Benenden Health in 2013.

Most recently at Benenden Health, McCallum led a team responsible for all products and services used by its 850,000 members, including its health care cash plan range.

There has never been a bigger focus on health and wellbeing as employers look to attract the best talent to their firms. Employees are as keen on the benefits as they are the salary when it comes to choosing where to work.

"It used to be the case that 90 per cent of cash plan businesses was individual customers,” says McCallum. “Now, more than 50 per cent of our business is companies buying health care cash plans for their employees and recognising that need to support them.”