Travel Insurance Advice

As thoughts turn to holidays in 2021, the issue of travel insurance has never been more complicated. The disruption from COVID-19 led many travellers to discover their policy wasn’t quite as comprehensive as they assumed. With local lockdowns, travel bans and quarantine an ever-changing situation in recent months, all too many people have found planned trips either impossible or no longer quite what they expected. If you’ve got an annual policy, your first step should be checking the date the policy began. The precise details will vary between insurers, but as a general rule any ordinary policy taken out after the start of April 2020 will almost certainly exclude any claims related to COVID-19. Instead, you’ll need to look for a policy that specifically covers coronavirus. Most such policies will only cover the medical effects, though a few policies will also cover cancellation. Whether you are relying on a pre-April 2020 policy or take out a new one that includes COVID-19 cancellation, check the conditions that will trigger a payout. Some policies will only cover you getting COVID-19 while some will pay out if a family member gets it. Some will only cover a positive diagnosis while others will cover cases where you are told to self-isolate, for example because you’ve been in close contact with somebody who has tested positive. Coronavirus has also brought much greater attention to Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advisories, something that’s normally only been an issue for people travelling to far-off war-torn nations. At the time of writing, the FCO still had a default position advising against any non-essential travel to any country that wasn’t specifically exempted.

If you do travel to a country that’s under such an advisory, your insurance is automatically invalid. However, a travel insurance policy almost certainly won’t cover you cancelling a trip because the FCO advice has changed. If you decide against travel altogether, you can usually cancel an ongoing annual policy and get a refund in proportion to the remaining time, minus any administrative fee. This won’t be allowed if you’ve already made a claim on the policy during the cover period, for example from a previous trip. Despite the increased limitations, travel insurance may soon be even more important in Europe. At the time of writing, the UK and the European Union had yet to agree an extension of the UK’s participation in the European Health Identity Card program beyond the end of 2020. The EHIC isn’t insurance, but rather a mutual agreement that covers European Union countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Anyone with an EHIC is entitled to medical treatment on the same basis as residents of the country where they fall ill. EHIC has never been a substitute for travel insurance, as it doesn’t cover disruption from illness or injury such as having to rebook flights home. However, if the UK does leave EHIC, travelling to the continent without travel insurance could lead to hefty medical bills even for basic treatment.