Biba Manifesto 2026: Spotlight on suitability of insurance products as women’s sports grows

Policy wordings excluding risks specific to female athletes need to be amended, Biba said in its latest 2026 manifesto.

In the document, entitled Economic Resilience, the broker trade body has identified gaps in the suitability of existing insurance products for women in sport.

The manifesto was launched at an event at the Houses of Parliament yesterday afternoon (14 January 2026). It confirmed Biba’s commitment to working with its specialist sports brokers and the taskforce established under the auspices of the Department of Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) to develop a set of recommendations for more inclusive products.

Personal accident, income protection and private medical insurance cover for professional and amateur female athletes were notably rendered unsuitable and needed to be amended, according to the manifesto.

In a pre-launch briefing with Insurance Times, Biba chief executive Graeme Trudgill explained: “We’ve had incredible success with our [England] women’s football team and rugby team, [but] they bring with them different risks, different injuries and different challenges.

“We’re working with DCMS about how we can adapt policy wordings and make sure there are solutions in place that actually fit the risks that this particular agenda brings, which I don’t believe have been catered for as much as they should have been in the past.”

Addressing exclusions

In the 2026 manifesto, Biba has committed to making amendments by considering which current exclusions to cover can be written back into a policy for women in sports.

For example, fractures are typically excluded from cover despite the most common injury to a female football player being a fractured leg or bone, explained Trudgill.

David Sparkes, regulation director at Biba, added that personal accident policies often exclude coverage for issues related to women “because we’ve always been focused on professional men’s sports rather than professional women’s.”

According to Horwich Farelly, female rugby players typically have a longer recovery time from concussion compared to male players, resulting in higher insurance claim payouts and significantly increased time loss costs.

This is just one example of the complications to coverage women face in professional sport.

In the press briefing, Trudgill concluded: “We need wordings to cover what the risks are and that’s currently not the female lived experience.

“We also need covers that are more relevant to them which we don’t have at the moment.”