Your best people are having babies. Let's keep them.

Private medical insurance excludes maternity care. How London firms, from BCG to private equity, are starting to fill the gap for their expecting staff.

Sarah Seror12 October 20266 min read

Your best people are having babies. Let's keep them.

Private medical insurance covers your people for almost everything except having a baby. The firms that fill the gap will keep the people others lose.

"The first person I told was my insurer"

When Sarah Seror found out she was pregnant, the first person she told was not her parents or her best friend. It was her insurer.

She was working at a private equity fund with generous private medical insurance at the time. “I called to ask what maternity care it covered, and the answer was none,” she says. “Pregnancy and birth, I was told, are a normal life event, not a medical condition.” Most UK policies work the same way.

Given the pressure on the NHS, and the profound effect having a child has on health, she was surprised. Private hospital care was financially out of reach, and it was not what she was after anyway. She wanted a clinician who knew her, whom she could text with a question, and who would support her after the birth. So she gave birth in France, her home country, where she was seen by the same midwife, eight hours of birth preparation and weekly home visits for six weeks after the birth.

Expecting her second child, she wanted to stay in London and was cared for by the NHS. The difference showed in pregnancy, when she saw 12 different midwives. But the hardest part came afterwards. “Five days after my baby arrived, my care had all but stopped. I was at home, not knowing whether my baby was feeding well, whether my body was healing, or whether what I was feeling was normal.” That uncertainty, and the lack of reassurance, led her to develop postnatal anxiety. It weighed heavily on her return to work, and ultimately on her decision to change jobs.

She is far from alone. The 2019 Parental Rights Survey found that 1 in 2 mothers and 1 in 4 fathers were no longer in the same job 18 months after their child was born. For employers, that is not a wellbeing statistic. It is a retention problem, and it starts long before anyone goes on leave.

Sarah went on to found The Motherhood Practice, and its answer is now available as an employee benefit: one named midwife for each expecting family, at home, from the first positive test to six weeks after birth, alongside NHS or private hospital care.

Some employers have already recognised the problem. BCG gives its employees a maternity care allowance. Across investment firms, many are now looking to fill the gap, through reproductive health platforms such as Fertifa, a partner of The Motherhood Practice, or through dedicated benefits like its own. Families booking their services work at BCG, Accenture, BGF, Monzo, Oaktree and many other finance and consulting firms.

The gap no parental policy has closed (until now)

Most leading firms already invest in parents through enhanced leave, return to work coaching, fertility support and parenting apps. Each has real value, but none addresses the gap between what the NHS can offer and what parents need.

NHS staff work hard under real pressure: in its 2025 State of Care report, the Care Quality Commission noted that 47% of maternity services were rated requires improvement or inadequate, and only 16% of midwives said there were enough staff to do their job properly. The gap shows up in three places.

Continuity. Four in five women never see the same midwife twice during pregnancy (CQC, 2025), so changes are noticed later. That matters clinically: a Cochrane review found that women cared for by a known midwife were 24% less likely to give birth prematurely and 16% less likely to lose their baby (Sandall et al., 2016).

Time and prevention. Hospital appointments often last under 15 minutes, leaving little room for questions, preparation or the partner.

Postnatal care. After one or two days on the ward, most families receive two health visitor visits in the first week, then nothing until the six week check, even though the first month after birth is when mothers are most vulnerable to mental health struggles (Munk-Olsen et al., JAMA, 2006) and physical pain.

The gap is wider still for international staff far from family, parents after a long fertility journey, and anyone with a condition that needs regular checks.

What it costs employers

Around 1 in 4 mothers and 1 in 10 fathers experience perinatal mental health difficulties. Research by the LSE and the Centre for Mental Health put the long term cost at £8.1 billion for each year's births in the UK, much of it through lost productivity and delayed returns to work.

Maternity is also where many women's careers stall. About a year after a first child, mothers' monthly earnings are 38% lower than before the birth. Five years on they are still 42% lower, a loss of around £65,000 (ONS, 2025). In private equity, only around 13% of senior investment roles are held by women (Level 20 and BVCA, 2025).

The people at risk are often the hardest to replace: employees who have spent years at the firm and built real expertise, a network and an understanding of how the business works. Losing one costs far more than a recruitment fee.

Replacing an employee typically costs between half and twice their annual salary (Gallup, 2019). For senior staff, The Motherhood Practice estimates that replacing a professional on a £170,000 package costs around £250,000, roughly one and a half times their pay.
Most of the cost is lost output. Oxford Economics found it makes up over 80% of the total, because a new hire in a large firm takes around 28 weeks to reach full productivity (2014).

One midwife, from first test to six weeks after birth, a model recommended by the WHO

The Motherhood Practice is built to close the parental care gaps. Each family, whether the employee is giving birth or their partner is, has the same registered midwife throughout.

That means continuity: one midwife who knows the history and shares clinical notes with the hospital.

It means time: hourly-long home consultations in pregnancy with full antenatal checks, 3 birth and postpartum preparation workshops for both parents, and WhatsApp access to the midwife 7d/7.

And it means postnatal care: five weekly home visits for mother, baby and partner, with feeding support, newborn care and a women's health physiotherapy check.

Emergencies are escalated promptly to the NHS. Sarah Seror co-founded the practice with senior midwife Clarissa Battaglino, who spent more than ten years in foetal medicine at UCLH. The practice has now a team of 10 experienced midwives who also practise in the NHS.

The benefit: simple to offer

Firms can offer it at two levels, with minimal set up, and receive regular reports on uptake and return to work feedback.

A free midwife consultation. At no cost to the firm, every expecting employee, partners included, can book a free online consultation with a midwife.

A dedicated midwife. For fuller support, the firm can fund a named midwife through pregnancy and the first weeks at home, giving each family the best chance of a healthy recovery and a successful return to work. Packages range from £2,000 to £5,000 per future parent depending on scope, well below private hospital maternity packages, which start at around £12,000 and can reach £40,000, usually without postnatal care.

You may already be covering it

If your firm offers international health insurance, maternity care may already be included, and The Motherhood Practice's services may be covered at no extra cost to the firm or its employees.

It works with insurers including Cigna, Allianz Worldwide Care, Aetna and Bupa Global. A quick check with your broker could show that your people already have access.

The impact

Fewer hours lost. Home visits outside core hours and direct messaging replace many hospital trips and waiting rooms. The Motherhood Practice estimates this saves more than 70 working hours per pregnant employee.

Problems caught earlier. A midwife who knows the pregnancy, and visits weekly after birth, is well placed to spot early signs of a physical complication or low mood while they are easiest to address.

A more confident return. Parents supported through the first six weeks, partners included, come back feeling looked after by their employer rather than left to manage alone.

People who stay. Keeping one experienced employee who might otherwise have left can justify the benefit on its own.

What families say

The Motherhood Practice is rated Excellent by verified patients on Doctify.

"The support and care we are experiencing is extremely beneficial, with ongoing communication throughout the weeks allowing us to obtain replies to any of our questions or concerns extremely quickly." Client, second pregnancy, Associate Director at EBRD, July 2026

"As first time parents living far from our families, her support really made a difference." BCG consultant, postnatal care, September 2026

Why it matters now

Sarah's insurer was right about one thing: pregnancy is a normal life event. Every firm will see it many times a year. What should not be normal is leaving the people you most want to keep to manage it without care, as she had to, then hoping they are still with you 18 months later.

Parental leave and return to work coaching were the first wave of parental benefits. Parental care is the next. HR and benefits leaders who would like to see how it could sit alongside an existing parental policy can book a 20 minute conversation with Sarah Seror at sarah@motherhoodpractice.com.