How can an Access Fertility IVF programme save you money?

For more than 10 years, Access Fertility have worked with fertility clinics across the UK. In that time, more than 12,000 babies have been born on Access Fertility IVF Programmes.

We sat down with our Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ash, Chief Operations Officer Juan, and Finance Product Owner Andy, Chief Finance Officer Sophia, and Patient Advisor Glacia to chat about how our programmes can save you money, working at Access Fertility, and how we help patients.

About Access Fertility

Q:What is Access Fertility and what do you do?

Ash: Access Fertility isn’t a clinic. We work with clinics; they’re the experts in delivering IVF and other fertility treatment. What we do is help patients make financial sense of IVF by taking away their financial risk and giving them great value for multiple treatment cycles.

Juan: What makes Access Fertility so unique is that we work with a network of clinics, across the UK and Europe, to deliver top quality IVF treatment, but locally to where our patients live.

Ash: I founded Access Fertility about 13 years ago. I think something like Access Fertility has always been in my mind because I want to work somewhere that helps people, and I could see that in the IVF industry many patients were losing out financially. They didn’t have a financial safety net, and when they don’t have a child, it might be helpful to provide them with some financial support so that they don’t lose all the money they’ve spent and have the disappointment of not having a child.

The Access Fertility IVF Refund Programme

Q: What is the Access Fertility IVF Refund Programme and how does it work?

Ash: Unfortunately, it’s really important to understand the risk that’s associated with IVF, on average across all age groups, about 1 in 4 cycles will result in a child. Let’s take a patient who’s under 35, they’ve probably got a 1 in 3 chance each time they go through a cycle of having a successful live birth. But if they don’t then they’ve paid a lot of money, maybe between £5,000 and £10,000. And when treatment ends that money has disappeared. That’s a hard thing to take.

Juan: Our Refund Programme provides for a long-term treatment plan for up to three cycles of IVF and unlimited frozen embryo transfers. On top of that, if unfortunately, the treatment doesn’t succeed and you don’t have a baby, you have the financial safety net of up to a 100% refund of the program fee.

Some patients going through treatment, will need donor eggs. That may be for health reasons but it could also be same sex couples. There are lots of reasons this may be the right choice for a patient. Access fertility offers a Donor Egg Refund Programme. you would have access to multiple cycles of IVF treatment, including unlimited frozen embryo transfers and ultimately, the financial safety net of up to 100% refund if treatment is unsuccessful.

Ash: What we do is we say to the patient, come to us, we work with fantastic clinics in the UK that are all licensed. And we will make sure that if it doesn’t go to plan, you get your money back. We will refund you either 50%, 70% or 100% based on what you choose and what you pay for, and that’s how we reduce the financial burden.

Juan: I remember a patient who enrolled on our 100% Refund Programme, and they didn’t have, a baby on that programme. But that meant they were entitled to the full 100% refund of the programme fee, which I think was about £12,000. That allowed them to sign up for another of our programmes, and on the first cycle of that, they achieved their dream and they had the baby. I think that was a patient who, without the benefit of that refund, wouldn’t have been able to go through further treatment. So it really changed their lives which was pretty incredible.

Ash: When I started the company 13 years ago, you can well imagine that people hadn’t heard of it and thought, well, the concept of a refund programme can’t be right. But 13 years on, here we are with over 12,000 babies born on our programmes and almost £20 million refunded to patients.

The Access Fertility IVF Multi-Cycle Programme

Q: What is the Access Fertility IVF Multi-Cycle Programme and how does it work?

Ash: We want to make sure that patients can access the volume of treatment they need, so we encourage patients to think about multiple cycles of IVF rather than one. That’s because of the success rate, it doesn’t make sense to me, to Access Fertility, and indeed to many clinical professionals to only plan for one cycle.

Juan: The Access Fertility Multi-Cycle programme offers you up to four cycles of IVF, unlimited frozen embryo transfers and significant financial savings compared to paying a clinic directly for treatment so you can begin your treatment straight away.

Ash: Committing to multiple cycles or planning for multiple cycles is incredibly important for your own mental well-being, financial well-being, and ultimately overall success. Being able to provide programmes that allow patients to have multiple cycles, whether it be fresh or frozen is very, very important.

IVF financing options with Access Fertility

Q: Can you explain how Access Fertility helps patients finance IVF? How does that work?

Juan: IVF treatment can be very, very expensive. It places a lot of emotional and financial pressure on patients which is why Access Fertility offers a 0% finance option. That means you can borrow up to £12,000 and repay it over 12 months, which makes treatment more affordable and more accessible to patients.

Andy: To help patients, we put together a financing package where you can borrow the amount of your programme to repay over a period of 12 months, which means that you don’t have to come up with that big figure upfront. Patients can spread the cost over up to 12 months, and it makes things that little bit more affordable.

Ash: Our 0% finance is something that we do in-house ourselves with our own money. It’s really important to me and to the company that we’re doing that ourselves and have control over it, so that there’s no third party with strict conditions that don’t make sense for the patients we care for.

Many companies will either charge more or take a commission when they’re offering 0% finance. We don’t do that. We don’t charge the clinics. We don’t charge a patient for 0%. Patients taking a program with us will pay the same as if they were taking it and paying it with their own money. If they’re using our finance solution, it’s exactly the same.

Andy: It really is what it says on the tin, Access Fertility offers 0% finance on our IVF programmes and egg freezing programmes that are available through our partner clinics. It is 0% interest over a maximum of 12 monthly payments. There’re no hidden fees or hidden charges. You can repay it early without penalty.

Ash: Patients don’t have to take out the full amount for the programme. So let’s say a program cost £9,000 and you already have £6,000 that’s been saved up or been gifted, whatever it might be. You can borrow the additional £3,000 from us. With each application we have to make sure that we assess each patient, from an underwriting perspective to make sure that that is financially achievable for that patient.

How Access Fertility helps patients

Q: How does Access Fertility help patients on their IVF journey?

Ash: Every single patient that comes to us is incredibly important. We want to make sure that they have a good experience as much as they can, whether they are successful or not. And for me, the patients that really, really stand out are the patients who were maybe believing, for whatever reason, that they weren’t going to be able to have a baby. They were at the end of their tether financially, struggling with the commitment the process takes, they’ve gone through years of many attempts. It’s those patients who finally get what they came in to IVF for; a baby. Those are the patients that put the biggest smile on their face.

Glacia: Patients when they meet you at the beginning of their journey they can be so confused. They don’t know much about IVF. They don’t know much about ICSI and by the end of a phone call or by the end of an email thread, I can explain what the journey is and help them every single step of the way. I think it’s the process of the timing that confuses patients. They don’t know what and when to do things, like when they should have the initial consultation or pre-treatment testing or register with Access Fertility or the clinic first. It can be very confusing for a lot of patients. And I think just being able to call us and say, ‘hey, I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s my first time. Can you help me, please?’ And I’m happy to guide them through everything.

Juan: We hear lots of stories from patients. There was a patient, I remember, who enrolled on one of our Refund Programmes. They went through treatment, and unfortunately, they didn’t have a baby. But what that meant is that they did have the benefit of a 100% refund, which for them was around £10,000 pounds. They got all of that money refunded to them and they chose to put it towards adoption. In the end, they went down a different route to parenthood and being able to support them and help them through that process was a pretty special experience.

Working at Access Fertility

Q:What have you found to be the most fulfilling part of working at Access Fertility?

Andy: I was in commercial banking for a number of high street banks, over 15 years, and it was rewarding. But nowhere has ever been more fulfilling or rewarding than working for Access Fertility. I mean, having the opportunity to help people on their fertility journeys day in, day out. I feel like I’m actually making a difference in people’s lives and seeing them come back with success stories very rewarding to me.

Juan: I joined Access Fertility because it was an opportunity to work in a sector where you make a real, big, meaningful difference to people’s lives.

Sophia: Prior to Access Fertility, I was a fractional CFO, so I would go in and out of businesses, and I came into Access, and I loved it that much that I wanted to become permanent and stay here. I think this is going to sound cliche, but it is just that I wanted to stay because of the people I worked with. We all work together so well collectively and I just felt really like I really fit in here and I can make a difference.

Glacia: Before working at Access Fertility I was working with the NHS 111 patient advisory But it became very intense. I decided that I still wanted to help people but work with something that brought me a lot more joy. The Patient Advisor team is like one big happy family, we’re a big blend of different vibes, different energies, different people, and we just come together. It’s fun. You know, It’s not just like it’s not stuffy, it’s not boring, it’s not boxy. You come to work every day and you look forward to coming to work every day, because you have a team of people that will help you if you don’t know something, and they will happily explain things and help you with things that you don’t understand. And I think that’s just amazing.