When it comes to booking your holiday, it’s clearly much more fun choosing your hotel or planning a day trip than checking out your travel insurance cover. It’s no wonder then that millions rely on the travel insurance offered by premium bank accounts or upmarket credit cards. For many, these plans provide perfectly adequate cover.
Yet with flights and holidays at risk of being cancelled this summer as a result of fuel shortages in the wake of the war in Iran, and with hospital fees in destinations such as the Caribbean or the US often topping $100,000 a week, any individual who travels abroad without checking their insurance first is taking a big risk. This is particularly true for older travellers for whom the risks of an extended stay in hospital abroad are the highest.
Even if you’re still in your fifties, you should first check whether your chosen travel cover has an upper age limit. Pre-Covid, many banks and card providers offered travel cover to people aged 80 or more, but in many cases these age limits are now 70 or lower (although a few like Lloyds Bank Platinum and HSBC Private Banking still offer cover up to age 80).
Single-trip plans tend to have the highest maximum ages, with comparable annual policies frequently having a lower age cap. But a few providers such as Staysure, AllClear and Saga impose no upper age limit, with solo travellers well into their nineties among their customers.
Yet don’t assume that just because you fall within your provider’s upper age limit that you are fully covered, warn insurers.
“The most important thing is making sure you’ve declared all of your medical conditions and you make sure that you are covered,” says Kevin McMullan, product and partnership director at Saga. “That’s something people often fall foul of. They’re unsure whether they need to declare something.”
In an extreme example, if you failed to declare that you suffer from type 1 diabetes and you then fall and break a leg while on holiday, you could find your claim for medical expenses refused if your provider argues that low blood sugar levels caused the fall.
The safest option, therefore, is to disclose, before your trip, all pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure, any serious past illnesses such as cancer and any health conditions for which you have received medical advice or treatment within the past two to five years (the exact period depends on your provider). Crucially, this also includes informing your bank or credit card provider if you are using their insurance.
It is possible that your cover will be refused, but at least this will give you the chance to seek alternative cover elsewhere, say brokers. More likely, say insurers, is that you will have to pay an additional premium, though sometimes there will be no extra charge at all.
Last year, Which?, the consumer group, surveyed almost 10,000 members who had bought travel insurance in the previous two years. Seven out of 10 of those surveyed declared a medical condition.
“Most found that this had only a minor impact on finding insurers that would cover them,” says Sam Richardson, deputy editor of Which? Money. And only a quarter believed that “their conditions had a major impact on what they paid”, he adds.
Age and your state of health are significant factors in influencing premiums, say insurers, but they are by no means the only determinants, with your chosen destination often one of the biggest price drivers.
Specialist insurer Staysure says a 75-year-old with no pre-existing medical conditions could secure cover for a two-week trip to Spain for £79.47. However, for a 75-year-old travelling to the US with two medical conditions, the cost rises sharply to £688.82, reflecting the higher costs of medical treatment in the US, potential higher repatriation costs and increased risks associated with pre-existing conditions.
Little surprise, then, that in a survey conducted by travel insurer AllClear, one of the two most important factors cited by over-seventies holidaymakers when choosing travel insurance was medical expenses cover. So, if travelling to the US, for example, look for unlimited medical expenses cover or limits of at least £5mn to £10mn.
Repatriation costs from the US to the UK can easily exceed $100,000 and from parts of Asia can rise to more than $200,000 (if you need a specialist medical team and your flight altitude must be restricted for health reasons), so check too for any limits on repatriation cover.
Over-seventies also seek out cancellation cover, according to AllClear’s survey, highlighting the importance of taking out travel insurance as soon as you book your holiday. So check that the limits will comfortably cover all cancellation costs. If you are travelling as a group, it makes sense to put all travellers on the same policy so that if one of the party is unable to travel for medical reasons, all of the party can claim.
It is also important to understand what travel insurance will cover you for in the event of cancellation. In essence, if you have to cancel your travel plans following an accident, illness or bereavement, then this is where travel cover can kick in, helping ensure you are not out of pocket and enabling you to purchase alternative travel arrangements where needed. But where an airline cancels a flight then this will not normally be covered by travel insurance.
If your flight is cancelled — as a result of a fuel shortage for example — then, under UK261 rules, the airline must offer either a full refund or an alternative flight. So your first port of call in this instance should be the airline. Travellers who book package holidays also benefit from ATOL protection and UK package travel regulations so, following disruption due to cancelled flights, your tour operator is required to offer you an alternative holiday or a refund.
If you have to cancel because, say, you are too ill to travel, then the good news is that “the amount of cancellation cover declared is for each person on the policy. This is sometimes missed by people,” says Simon McCulloch, chief growth officer at travel insurer Staysure. “So if there’s two of you going on holiday and you see a policy for £5,000 worth of cancellation cover and you both have to cancel because of the illness of one person, you can claim for up to £10,000 there”.
Beware, though, that this same logic normally applies to excesses, with each claimant on a policy having any excess amount deducted from each claim.
If travelling within the EU or in other specific jurisdictions, such as Australia, covered by the Global Health Insurance Card, apply for a GHIC via the NHS website. This will give you the same healthcare as a local in the partner countries. Bear in mind, however, that it can take more than two weeks to arrive; that in countries that operate “co-pay” systems — if you do not have appropriate travel insurance — you will have to foot the costs of any shortfall; and that the card only covers state-run hospitals.
“If you’re in Spain and you’ve slipped over around the swimming pool or in your shower in your room and called down and say ‘I need an ambulance’, then there’s a fair chance that you’ll end up with a private ambulance and the cost of that,” says Garry Nelson, head of corporate affairs at AllClear.
So the GHIC, while highly beneficial to travellers, is not a replacement for travel insurance. If you’re looking for travel cover, Richardson from Which? says good places to start are the MoneyHelper consumer website or, if you are struggling to find cover at an affordable price, the Find Insurance Service from the British Insurance Brokers’ Association.
If you’re in your eighties or nineties or perhaps you’re no longer in the best of health, provided you’re prepared to stump up the premiums, there may be nothing else stopping you from planning that trip of a lifetime.