Established in October 1997, Saudi Arabia-based Bupa Arabia, a healthcare insurance company (an associate business of Bupa Group), has created its own international reach that extends across multiple business operations, practices, and resources. The company, which was initially established through a partnership between Bupa Global International and Nazer Group, emerged with the key focus to provide high-quality health insurance services with competitive prices, while ensuring a distinctive experience for customers.
As a subsidiary of the global Bupa Group, the business draws upon international expertise while maintaining a profound understanding of local healthcare requirements and regulations. This approach helps Bupa Arabia to offer comprehensive healthcare insurance solutions tailored to the unique needs of the Kingdom’s market.
Bupa Arabia’s SME Sales team, part of the Growth Department, was recently awarded the title of “Best Medical Insurance Sales Team – Saudi Arabia 2025” by Global Business Outlook (GBO), and is transforming the Kingdom’s SME healthcare landscape through strategic innovation, digital transformation, and a strong focus on people-centric excellence.
Building new operating model
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Saudi economy, contributing significantly to innovation, job creation, and the national transformation under the socio-economic diversification agenda named “Vision 2030.” These businesses represent the entrepreneurial spirit, which in turn is helping the Kingdom diversify away from its heavy reliance on the energy trade-based revenue generation model, apart from employing millions of Saudi citizens and creating opportunities across diverse sectors, from technology, manufacturing, retail, to professional services.
As the needs of SMEs evolve in an increasingly complex business environment, so does the demand for healthcare solutions that go beyond traditional insurance solutions that provide trust, transparency, and comprehensive support through every stage of an employee’s wellbeing journey.
Modern SMEs require partners who understand their unique challenges: managing costs while attracting talent, ensuring business continuity while caring for employees, and navigating regulatory requirements while maintaining competitive advantage.
Understanding the reality, Bupa Arabia, the Kingdom’s leading health insurer with decades of experience serving businesses of all sizes, has been reshaping its SME proposition through a comprehensive multi-year transformation journey. This journey is about representing a fundamental reimagining of how healthcare insurance can empower businesses to succeed.
Bupa Arabia has taken an integrated four-pillar model: placing SME needs at the heart of every decision and process, streamlining processes to deliver efficiency and reliability, giving priority to technology-driven solutions that simplify and accelerate routine operational activities, and investing aggressively in human resources by building teams with the skills to excel in a transformed digital-dominated professional environment.
This roadmap has consolidated Bupa Arabia’s reputation as a trusted partner for thousands of SMEs across the Kingdom, delivering not just health coverage, but a robust, holistic ecosystem designed to enable entrepreneurs and their teams to thrive in an era of rapid change and unprecedented opportunity. The company has created a structured, multi-phase programme, tailored to create a high-performing, scalable, and sustainable SME operating model that can adapt to market dynamics while maintaining consistency and quality across all touchpoints.
Unified SME operating framework
The SME sales department implements a unified operating model with a clearly defined structure covering SME Direct Sales (Central, Eastern, and Western), SME Broker Sales, SME Subregional Sales, SME Recovery Sales at a Kingdom-wide level, and SME Management & Support encompassing Development, Operations, Customer Centricity, and Strategy & Projects. This enhanced structure ensures absolute role clarity, promotes cross-functional collaboration, and guarantees consistent delivery across all customer-facing channels, whether direct or through broker partnerships.
In an exclusive interaction with GBO, Managing Director of SME Sales, Feras Al-Tamimi said, “With strengthened governance mechanisms embedded throughout the organisation, we introduced rigorous monthly performance reviews, enhanced funnel and portfolio dashboards providing real-time visibility, standardised reporting frameworks that ensure consistency, and clear escalation mechanisms for rapid issue resolution. This governance structure ensures organisational agility, complete transparency across all levels, and disciplined execution aligned with strategic objectives. Decision-making is now informed by comprehensive data analytics, enabling proactive rather than reactive management.”
Echoing similar views, Director of SME Direct Sales, Central Region, Raed Al-Zahrani stated that the complete SME lifecycle from initial prospecting and quotation through onboarding, ongoing servicing, and renewal was fundamentally redesigned to eliminate friction points, simplify handovers between teams, and deliver a seamless, intuitive customer journey.
“Every touchpoint was examined through the customer lens, with pain points identified and resolved. The result is a customer experience that feels effortless, with reduced waiting times, clearer communication, and more predictable outcomes. This journey redesign represents hundreds of hours of process mapping, customer feedback integration, and iterative refinement,” he noted.
To understand SME owners and their needs better, Bupa Arabia conducted more than 1000 interviews with decision makers from different enterprises in the Kingdom, which helped the venture to design a health insurance that suits SME needs. Known as “Bupa Munsha’at Health Insurance,” the programme comes in three categories: Essential, Classic, and Premium.
Essential provides health insurance at a competitive price that fits SMEs’ operational budgets. In the case of “Classic,” the network options increase further, as per the beneficiaries’ needs, and “Premium” comes with exceptional benefits to fit the customers’ expectations.
While all these programmes have common benefits like maximum coverage level (varies as per the plans) for insured persons for the term of the policy (including the sub-limit) at an approved network of hospitals and clinics, coverage of hospitalisation costs, same-day cases (including level of accommodation within the network and companion charges when medically necessary), out-patient department costs, doctor consultations, laboratory tests, scans, medications, and other treatments like follow-up visits and referrals, Classic also covers selective (non-emergency) treatment out of its Saudi-based network, as per accepted prices, that have been approved for the same level of network coverage mandated within the Kingdom.
While Premium also possesses the same feature, it has an additional benefit: emergency medical evacuation in cooperation with “International SOS Assistance” when the illness occurs outside Saudi Arabia only.
Digital automation transforming SME sales
To accelerate transformation and dramatically reduce manual complexity that historically slowed down sales cycles and introduced errors, Bupa Arabia has developed SADiR, a pioneering digital platform that automates the entire SME New Business (NB) and Renewal (RNW) journeys from end to end.
SADiR represents a quantum leap in how Bupa Arabia serves SME customers, replacing manual, paper-based processes with intelligent, automated workflows that enhance speed, accuracy, and customer satisfaction simultaneously.
Acting Director of SME Management and Support, Tariq Jumah said, “SADiR was launched through a carefully structured pilot developed in close collaboration with SME and Digital Sales teams. This pilot-first approach enabled iterative learning, rapid feedback integration, and confidence-building before full-scale deployment, ensuring the platform truly meets user needs.”
SADiR works on five basic principles: System Eligibility Assessment (defining clear use cases and system boundaries for optimal performance), User Adoption Programmes (comprehensive training ensuring frontline teams are confident and capable), Funnel Accuracy Enhancement (data quality initiatives to improve forecasting and pipeline management), Turnaround Time Optimisation (process refinement to accelerate every stage of the customer journey), and Stakeholder Satisfaction (measuring and improving experience for customers, brokers, and internal teams).
SADiR’s transformative impact on the Saudi SME sector has been a profound one. On the policy quotation and issuance front, the platform has reduced turnaround times from days to hours, enabling SME sales teams to respond to market opportunities with unprecedented speed.
Automated checks and validations are eliminating human error and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements at every step. SADiR is also providing entrepreneurs with real-time insights into pipeline health (condition and effectiveness of an SME’s sales pipeline), conversion rates, and bottlenecks, while creating a single source of truth for customer data and interaction history.
Building capability
Behind every sophisticated system and streamlined process lies a strong human foundation. Technology and process improvements can only deliver their full potential when supported by skilled, motivated, and aligned people.
Recognising this fundamental truth, Bupa Arabia has invested heavily in strengthening its SME workforce through structured capability-building programmes, leadership alignment initiatives, and fostering a culture centred on collaboration, accountability, and ownership.
The newly structured “SME Management & Support” function now serves as the strategic anchor for the entire SME business, providing critical enablement across four interconnected domains: development, operations, customer centricity, strategy, and projects. This integrated enablement model ensures that sales professionals have everything they need, be it tools, insights, processes, or support, to excel in serving customers and achieving business objectives.
Acting Director of SME Management and Support, Tariq Jumah, said, “Through continuous training, awareness sessions, and engagement initiatives, we are cultivating a culture where every SME employee deeply understands the strategy, aligns with the operating model, and actively contributes to customer excellence. This culture transformation is not a programme with an end date; it’s an ongoing commitment to growing our people as we grow our business.”
The “SME Management & Support” is driving performance management, governance frameworks, forecasting accuracy, budget discipline, and continuous capability enhancement through targeted training programmes. On the operational front, the solution delivers comprehensive sales operations support, apart from maintaining rigorous funnel hygiene, managing portfolio health, and ensuring operational efficiency across all sales channels.
When it comes to customer centricity, “SME Management & Support” champions quality standards, integrating voice of customer insights and embedding service excellence principles throughout the organisation.
Also, the solution is helping SMEs to lead long-term strategic planning, manage transformation initiatives, and provide execution governance to ensure strategic objectives translate into operational reality.
Achievements and business results
Bupa Arabia’s comprehensive SME transformation has generated significant, measurable business impact across multiple dimensions, from portfolio growth and customer satisfaction to operational efficiency and team capability. These achievements reflect the maturity of a disciplined, customer-focused operating model that consistently delivers value.
SMEs are now witnessing substantial onboarding expansion in their customer base and premium volume, driven by improved value proposition and market presence. Enhanced customer loyalty and renewal rates also reflect superior service quality and relationship strength.
Crucial financial activities like pipeline visibility and revenue predictability are registering dramatic improvement through better data and governance, and digital automation and process optimisation have made quotation and policy issuance significantly hassle-free and faster for the Kingdom’s SME sector.
Director of SME Direct Sales, Eastern Region, Hani Al-Harbi said, “Beyond quantitative metrics, the transformation has created powerful qualitative improvements that position us for sustained success. There is now strong alignment between sales, development, operations, and customer-centricity teams, with all functions working in concert rather than in isolation. Cross-functional collaboration has become the norm rather than the exception, breaking down historical silos and creating a unified team focused on customer outcomes.”
Broker partners are now reporting higher satisfaction with streamlined processes, faster response times, clearer communication, and more sophisticated digital tools, solutions that have revitalised the broker channel as a whole. Bupa Arabia’s partners are viewing the company as their preferred carrier for SME business.
“SME customers experience a dramatically improved journey from first inquiry through renewal, with less paperwork, faster decisions, more transparent communication, and easier access to support. Customer satisfaction scores have risen consistently, and complaint volumes have decreased, reflecting the tangible impact of journey redesign and digital enablement on everyday customer experiences. These results collectively demonstrate a mature, disciplined, and genuinely customer-focused SME operating model that delivers value for all stakeholders, customers, brokers, employees, and shareholders alike. The foundation has been built for sustainable growth and continued market leadership,” Director of SME Broker Sales, Razan Ajzaji noted.
The road to 2026 and beyond
Bupa Arabia’s SME transformation journey is far from complete, as the venture recognises that maintaining market leadership requires continuous evolution, innovation, and improvement. The next phase of Bupa Arabia’s SME innovation will focus on scaling what works, apart from optimising performance and deepening impact across the entire ecosystem, as the Kingdom accelerates its socio-economic diversification efforts under “Vision 2030.”
Director of SME Direct Sales, Central Region, Raed Al-Zahrani, said, “Building on the successful SADiR pilot, the digital roadmap includes scaling the platform across additional customer segments and use cases, enhancing automation capabilities with more sophisticated validations and workflow intelligence, integrating more deeply with CRM systems and analytics platforms for unified data views, and significantly improving digital touchpoints for sales teams, customers, and broker partners. The vision is establishing a fully digital-first SME experience that maintains the human touch where it matters most while leveraging technology for speed, accuracy, and convenience.”
Through the company’s help, SMEs are able to continuously refine Bluebook standard operating procedures to reflect evolving best industrial practices, apart from strengthening risk management and quality assurance frameworks with proactive monitoring and controls. All these elements are helping the Kingdom-based businesses to fully align with evolving regulatory standards put forward by SAMA (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority) and other government bodies, apart from embedding quality metrics throughout the value chain. Quality is not an endpoint but a continuous journey of improvement, and governance frameworks will evolve to support both growth and control simultaneously.
Managing Director of SME Sales, Feras Al-Tamimi, said, “The progress achieved through our transformation journey is only the beginning of what we will accomplish together. With strong values that guide our decisions, a unified operating model that aligns our efforts, disciplined governance that ensures consistency, bold digital transformation that accelerates our capabilities, and empowered teams who bring their best every day, we are actively shaping the future of SME health insurance in the Kingdom. Our focus remains unwavering: delivering excellence in everything we do, strengthening partnerships with brokers and customers alike, and enabling SMEs across Saudi Arabia to thrive by providing the healthcare security and support their employees deserve. We are not just an insurance provider, but also a strategic partner committed to the success and well-being of the businesses building Saudi Arabia’s future.”
As Saudi Arabia advances toward “Vision 2030,” SMEs will continue to play an increasingly vital role in economic diversification, innovation, and job creation. These businesses need partners who understand their aspirations, challenges, and the critical importance of protecting their greatest asset, their people.
Bupa Arabia has positioned itself not just as a health insurer, but as a strategic enabler of SME success. Through years of disciplined transformation across customer experience, operations, digital capabilities, and people development, the company has built a robust platform for sustainable growth and market leadership.
“The journey continues with clear strategic priorities, committed leadership, capable teams, and an unwavering focus on customer success. We are keeping pace with market evolution and actively leading the transformation of SME healthcare, setting new standards for what insurance partnerships can and should deliver. For thousands of SMEs across the Kingdom, we are more than a health insurer. We are the trusted partner enabling businesses to protect their people, attract talent, ensure continuity, and build the future with confidence. Together, we are leading the future of SME health insurance in Saudi Arabia,” Chief Growth Officer Atef M Mufti concluded.