BUPA Group

BUPA is a British international healthcare provisioning and multi-insurance group, with its origins and headquarters in the United Kingdom, but now serving 32 million customers in 190 countries. It is a private healthcare company limited by guarantee,[1] unlike the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), which is a tax-funded healthcare system. While initially growing organically through green-field expansions, it has recently tended to function akin to a Private Equity firm, with its corporate strategy heavily influenced by M&A activity in order to consolidate itself as a market leader in healthcare provisioning and multi-insurance. It is consistently ranked among the best places to work, having placed 5th in the 2019 edition of LinkedIn’s Top Companies in the UK.

Acquisitions and Divestments
In 2007, the company announced the sale of its UK BUPA Hospitals to Spire Healthcare. However, during 2008, the firm acquired the London-based Cromwell Hospital flagship hospital to provide healthcare to its members and other private patients including medical tourists from outside the UK.
Approval was given in the same year for a merger between Bupa’s Australian arm (which until then comprised HBA and Mutual Community) and insurance group MBF. The merger created what is now Australia’s largest private health insurance group, with 3.98m lives covered. On 1 December 2008, Clinovia’s name was changed to Bupa Home Healthcare. In October 2010 the firm sold Bupa Health Assurance to Resolution Limited, and it has been rebranded as part of Friends Life. At the end of 2012 Bupa acquired the largest private healthcare network in Poland, Lux Med, from the private equity fund Mid Europa Partners for €400m. In February 2015 Bupa acquired a controlling share in Chilean private healthcare network Cruz Blanca, which has a 21% share in the local market. It emerged in January 2016 that the company was to sell its domiciliary care business, which provided care to around 35,500 people, to Celesio AG.
Over the years, it has diversified away from its core health insurance business and is now an international healthcare company with services that include travel insurance, health insurance, care homes, expatriate insurance, health assessments, occupational health services and hospitals. When the Health and Social Care Act 2012 came into force in April 2013 Bupa won the first high-value contract – a £235m deal to provide musculoskeletal services in West Sussex jointly with Central Surrey Health in November 2014.
It bought the dentistry chain Oasis in November 2016 for £835 million from private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital. Oasis runs 380 UK dental practices, both NHS and private, with more than 1,800 dentists. It has an annual revenue of £277 million. The name of the business was changed to Bupa Dental Care. In January 2019 it acquired 9 more practices, making a total of 23 in 6 months.
It bought two care homes in Poole from Primetower in October 2016.
In August 2017 it sold 122 care homes, with 9,000 beds, to HC-One for £300 million.
During the 2018-19 financial year, Bupa remained the biggest player by customer numbers, with almost 3.6 million customers. However, the insurer has experienced losses in Australia- 50,000 net customer losses across all products and almost 80,000 of its core hospital cover customers.

Harcourt Matthews have supported both group finance, Hospitals and Home Healthcare, resourcing & recruiting and supplying people UK wide in the Accounting & Finance arena

BUPA Hospitals, now Spire Healthcare, was a key division of the BUPA group, t/o £320m with circa 25 UK hospitals. These hospitals were nationwide and locations included Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Harpenden, Ilford, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Norwich, Portsmouth, Reading, Southampton, Southend, Tonbridge, Wirral & Warrington

An internal review of the Commercial Finance and Transactions Shared Services communities identified the need to leverage higher calibre and quality of operationally focused finance specialists and senior clerical accounting support staff that reflected the redesigned business. Key objectives included:

  • Replacement of those individuals leaving the organisation
  • Dissolution of the internal audit function and development of a commercially focused accounting function
  • Additional development of a customer-focused transactions accounting support function
  • Rationalisation of teams and the recruitment of more “business-minded” Management Accountants, Operations Finance Analysts, Area Finance Analysts, Regional Financial Controllers, Operations Financial Controller and senior transaction accounting support staff, raising the quality of work delivered in each hospital

The project resulted in the successful recruitment of 23 qualified & part qualified accountants and 14 transaction accounting individuals in phase 1, with additional recruitment on phases 2 and 3. Success on phase 1 project management led to our inclusion into the BUPA Group preferred supplier list with ongoing recruitment for both Spire Healthcare and BUPA.

BUPA Home Healthcare is the UK’s most experienced provider of comprehensive high tech and specialist homecare. The organisation works alongside the NHS, social, educational establishments and private medical insurers to ensure that patients treated in the comfort of their own home receive the best possible care and attention. BUPA group acquired Clinovia, a private equity-backed home healthcare provider, where Harcourt Matthews partnered the senior management team in developing the people structure and supported a variety of recruitment processes, enabling the business to grow rapidly from an SME into a substantial medium-sized business prior to Its sale to BUPA. As the senior management team migrated away and bought out, Harcourt Matthews established further relations with the incoming BUPA management team, and supported them in identifying internal candidate talent from other parts of the group, and recruited others to support an aggressive growth strategy from the external market

Internal reviews of existing and new business, to meet the strategic plans, identified the need to leverage higher calibre and commercial quality of staff for head office and commercial projects. The Group MD and the CFO sought to make step changes in the level and capability of the team and at the same time reduce the number of temporary staff within the whole business community in Harlow and the rest of the UK.

In group and the divisions, several key objectives were highlighted, including:

  • Identifying commercially and technically focused individuals to evolve best practice in Accounting & Finance, specifically in planning & analysis, forecasting, reporting & commercial financial control and Accounting IT systems

Harcourt Matthews has established several recruitment campaigns and range of candidate sourcing processes to attract a wide range of candidate types encompassing:

  • Accessing our network & extensive CV database, existing contacts and gaining new referrals / recommendations
  • Accessing several jobsite CV databases covering the active UK candidate market
  • Advertising on several job boards
  • Using our internal and several 3rd party outsourced research businesses contracted to identify and to supply scarce candidate resource (passive & non active people)
  • Specific sector headhunting campaigns complementing the above approach
  • Messaging programmes to specific accounting & finance trained CIMA, ACCA and ACA individuals who fulfilled the Accounting & Finance brief

This has resulted in the successful recruitment of several qualified accountants & part qualified accountants and inclusion as a preferred supplier list for the UK business

Jobs supported & recruited for include: Interim, temporary & permanent

BUPA Group
Business Analyst
Group Financial Analyst
Group Analyst Reporting & Planning
Group Management Accountant
Internal Auditor
Senior Internal Auditor
Senior Group Management Accountant
Systems Accountant
Project Accountant – IT

BUPA Hospitals
Commercial Finance Manager
Financial Analyst
Finance Manager – Birmingham & Solihull & Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
Finance Manager – Edinburgh, Scotland
Finance Manager – Harpenden & Bushey (Watford), Hertfordshire
Finance Manager – Leeds, West Yorkshire
Finance Manager – Leicester
Finance Manager – Liverpool & Wirral, Merseyside
Finance Manager – London
Finance Manager – Manchester & Macclesfield & Warrington, Cheshire
Finance Manager – Norwich, Norfolk & Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
Finance Manager – Portsmouth, Havant, Hampshire
Finance Manager – Reading, Berkshire & Slough, Buckinghamshire & Farnham, Surrey
Finance Manager – Southampton, Hampshire
Finance Manager – Brentwood, Redbridge (Ilford), Southend On Sea, Essex
Finance Manager – Chatham, Hythe & Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Finance Manager – Wirral & Warrington
Operational Auditor Manager
Operational Financial Controller
Operations Business Analyst
Operations Finance Analyst
Operations Finance Manager
Project Analyst
Regional Commercial Financial Controller
Senior Financial Analyst Projects
Senior Finance Analyst
Senior Management Accountant

BUPA Home Healthcare
Accounts Assistant
Commercial Accountant
Commercial Analyst
Commercial Finance Manager
Commercial Financial Controller
Finance Manager
Financial Accountant
Financial analyst
Financial Analyst – Pricing
Head of Financial Reporting
Head of Purchasing
Interim Accountant
Interim Financial Accountant
Interim Financial Controller
M&A Integration Finance Manager
Management Accountant
Management Accounting Manager
Pricing Analyst
Project Accountant
Senior Credit Control Supervisor
Senior Financial Analyst
Strategy analyst & Modeller