Don’t Let Age Or Illness Limit Your Travels: How To Find Travel Insurance For All Your Needs
Purchasing travel insurance in later years can be difficult, especially for those with medical conditions – but it doesn’t have to be if you book with a specialist insurer.
Many regular insurers are turning their backs on older potential customers with health problems because there are fewer claims from younger, healthy customers. But a roundup of companies willing to embrace “trickier” policies can be found at Money Helper (moneyhelper.org.uk).
Among the companies mentioned are InsureCancer, which specializes in terminal cancer coverage, and Freedom Insurance, which has policies for liver disease and is underwritten by the British Liver Trust.
Holiday Extras Cover Limited, Paying toomuch.com and Able2Travel have cover for medical equipment up to £3,000. And AllClear Insurance Services Limited covers kidney failure.
Other specialist companies include Insurefortravelhealth.co.uk, Free Spirit, Travel Insurance 4 Medical and Saga.
Purchasing travel insurance in later years can be difficult, especially for those with medical conditions – but it doesn’t have to be if you book with a specialist insurer
A total of 28 are listed when you visit Money Helper’s ‘Find a travel insurance provider if you have a serious medical condition or disability’ page.
Based in Surrey, InsureCancer is a leading insurer founded in 2001 by a former director of Lloyd’s of London, Dr Krish Shastri, after he was asked to look into insurance for someone with cancer, only to find that patients were being excluded. He has pushed for medical conditions to be covered by the insurance industry and says it is a “scandal” that companies are not offering policies.
He says, “Many companies will have a tick-off process. But cancer is far too complex for that. Someone can have terminal cancer, but still live many years.’
Dr. Shastri, whose average customer is over 70, has quoted prices on some comparison sites as ridiculously high: ‘£19,000 for two weeks’ cover for someone with metastatic prostate cancer in Europe? This excludes people from traveling,” he says.
On its website which.co.uk, consumer organization Which? also mentions ‘Best travel insurance for the over 65s’. Among the listed providers are Insure and Go (insuranceandgo.com), story (saga.nl), Everything clear (allcleartravel.co.uk), Co-op insurance services (coop.nl) and Staysure (staysure.co.uk). Experts in Which? however, recommend using comparison websites such as moneysupermarket.com, confused.com, gocompare.com, and Comparethemarket.com to search for options. Another tactic is to use the ‘find a broker service’ offered by the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (biba.org.uk).
Our snapshot review of multi-trip travel insurance policies on moneysupermarket.com found that annual travel insurance policies can increase by more than 140 percent from your early 50s to your 70s.
For some people over the age of 80, year-round coverage may not be available at all, although we did find policies at Saga Travel Insurance – for those with no medical conditions.
A list of companies willing to embrace ‘tougher’ policies can be found on Money Helper – Holiday Extras Cover Limited, Paying toomuch.com and Able2Travel for example have cover for medical equipment up to £3,000
Our research also found that if you are traveling in Europe and are over the age of 50, it may be cheaper to buy a single trip policy than buying annual cover. There are fears that high insurance prices could lead some people to give up foreign holidays as they get older, or risk traveling without insurance, according to the over-60s campaign group Silver Voices.
However, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) says: ‘Insurers aim to offer competitively priced insurance to as many people as possible. It adds that while prices can be high, medical costs for the uninsured can be “staggeringly expensive.” The ABI warns that failure to declare medical conditions will invalidate the policy. The organization has a policy that if its members cannot provide coverage, they will refer people to alternative providers.
Older travelers make more frequent – and higher – claims on travel insurance. Industry figures show that the percentage of claims over 80 is rising rapidly, peaking at 2.5%. of all customers over the age of 90 making claims, with an average payout of over £3,000. Higher policy costs for the elderly are therefore understandable.
But looking around can save a bundle.
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Graham Sargeant, pictured with his wife Susan, says there is ‘age discrimination’ in travel insurance
After passing the age of 70, Graham Sargeant (now 75) found his annual multi-trip insurance more than tripled to £600 and he could no longer afford it.
Meanwhile, his wife Susana, age 66, suffered from a liver fluke infection in her youth. When she applied for travel insurance, it seemed that after she passed the age of 65 she had to declare it – with the result that she was rejected.
“I really think there is ageism in travel insurance,” said Mr Sargeant (along with his wife), a retired local government worker from Seaton Carew, County Durham. ‘Insurers are just milking us.’ Fortunately, the couple sought online advice from the British Liver Trust (britishlivertrust.org.uk). They then found one-off travel insurance for their upcoming seven-day cruise to Norway for £121 for both, offered by Freedom Insurance (freedom insurance.nl).