Southern Cross Healthcare Group

The Southern Cross Healthcare Group is a collection of independent, health-oriented businesses in New Zealand. A not-for-profit, the Group is widely regarded as the nation's largest non-public healthcare organisation.

The Group’s businesses include health insurance, private hospitals, travel insurance and pet insurance. The Group is made up of two organisations - the Southern Cross Medical Care Society and the Southern Cross Health Trust.

The Southern Cross Medical Care Society (trading as Southern Cross Health Society), founded in 1961, is a society and New Zealand’s largest health insurer, with more than 870,000 members. The Health Society funded more than NZ$830m of healthcare services in the year to 30 June 2017, including 240,000 elective surgeries, or 73% of the country's health insurance claims. It also offers life insurance and corporate wellness programmes.

The Health Trust was established in 1977 and is a Charitable Trust which exists to benefit all New Zealanders. It is the owner of Southern Cross Hospitals Ltd and Southern Cross Benefits Ltd (trading as Southern Cross Travel Insurance and Southern Cross Pet Insurance). Southern Cross Hospitals, established in 1979, is New Zealand's largest private hospital network, with 19 wholly owned and joint-venture facilities that provided private healthcare services to 78,000 patients in the year to June 2017. This includes insurance-funded, public-funded and self-paying patients. Nearly 1000 surgeons and anaesthetists are credentialed to practice within Southern Cross Hospitals facilities. In July 2019, Southern Cross Hospitals announced the creation of a new role - Chief Digital Officer, filled by Trevor Delaney - to focus on improving health outcomes using digital strategy.

Southern Cross Benefits Limited, established in 1982, operates as a direct-to-consumer travel-insurance business (Southern Cross Travel Insurance) that covered around 445,000 travellers in both New Zealand and Australia in the 2017 financial year.

In 2012 Southern Cross Benefits Limited acquired the pet insurance book of Ellenco Pet Insurance and re-launched the business as Southern Cross Pet Insurance in 2014. As at 30 June 2017 Southern Cross Pet Insurance insured more than 21,000 cats and dogs.

During the global Covid-19 pandemic, Southern Cross announced it was to return premiums of NZ$50m to its 880k members and 4k business customers.