Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:48 am on 2 November 2010.

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Martin Shaw: It depends on the provider and the model that they adopted. Of the friendly societies, for instance, a number actively marketed and developed the product. That has meant a significant capital investment on their behalf. Others took the route of saying, “We’ll just take the revenue-allocated accounts”, which are products that the parent did not themselves invest in. That meant that they could run the product on the back of a spreadsheet and for some of those smallish providers, their largest single cost was buying a new envelope stuffer. After years five or six they started seeing a very small return on their investment. The larger firms, because of the marketing and investment costs, will not have seen a positive return.