Holiday Insurance

[JoBarBoo]

I was wondering if anyone could help me. Myself and my family have holiday insurance through our bank. I have a health condition (recently diagnosed after we got the travel insurance) which looks more and more likely that I won’t be able to travel next week. The limit for cancellation is £5000. The cost of the holiday is £10000. Could anyone clarify is the £5000 the limit per policy or limit per person (my family are covered by the same policy).
Thank you

You need to read the small print on your policy. There is no way anyone can answer that without seeing the t’s & c’s

Thank you for your contribution (?!) For what it’s worth I scoured the policy documents for the relevant info for about 3 hours last night but couldn’t find what i was looking for. Hence why I was reaching out for some help. Perhaps someone’s been through the same experience before. Isn’t this what these forums are for 😂?!

It is normally per policy, when taking it out you are normally given the option of upping the amount covered, did you do this?

The previous poster wasn’t being unhelpful. Each travel insurance provider will have different rules. So you do need to check with your specific provider.

However £5,000 cover would not cover the cost of most family holidays if that is the total. So it seems more likely that is per individual.

A key thing will be to get written confirmation from your doctor that you are unable to travel. Do you have that already?

Hope you manage to get this sorted out.

Have you tried ringing? When I had travel insurance through Barclays they were really helpful on the phone.

I think I will probably have to ring, I just wanted to be prepared for what to expect. Really I was just wondering if anyone had tried to claim, what they received and if my expectations were realistic.

With regards to upping the amount there is nothing on the upgrades to do this, the only upgrades I can find on the Allianz Hub is Excess Waiver and adding someone who’s not in your immediate family.

I have the insurance through Lloyds Bank, and the insurer is Allianz.

Just ring them. They will be able to give you the correct information. I am sorry you are ill. I have cancelled 2 holidays due to illness. One was covered, the other wasn't. It really depends on your policy terms and conditions. I hope you get it sorted.

Check the important information page. It should say there whether it is per person or per policy. It will be near the table of benefits.

In my experience of working in travel insurance it is per person for benefits and each person will pay the excess so if it’s 4 of you and the excess is £100 they will take £400 off you. Check your policy in case it’s different.

This is helpful, thank you.
The wording says: “This is your travel insurance policy. It contains details of cover, conditions and exclusions relating to each insured person and is the basis on which all claims will be settled.”
So perhaps I right to assume that despite it being the same policy as my husband is also named on there as a separate person he would also be able to claim back some of the cost of the holiday too. I will remain hopeful. I have to wait until next week to see if I am fit to fly!

You can ring them now. Nobody can tell you other than your insurer

I know this, I just wanted to reach out to see if anyone had been through it before 😂😂
But thanks?!

No wishing to add to your stress over this, but if you are deemed fit to fly, the insurer can refuse to cover you for travel because of the new condition, or slap you with a massive extra charge to be covered for your travel. It's a catch 22 because if you are fit to fly but don't, they often won't pay out, but if you want to travel then you have to pay more for your cover.

I am assuming this is a "packaged" insurance with your bank? I used to have one. The second you have any condition outside the norm (and I mean even common and low risk ones) they slam up the price. When I was diagnosed with arthritis (and literally at that time it had next to no impact other than some pain) the "extra" they wanted to charge me was more than the entire of an annual policy with someone else.

Martin Lewis often points out these packages with bank accounts are not always as good as they seem.

Yes I totally agree having spent most of the night awake looking through the documents you are totally right. Either way, when I get a clearer picture next week of my condition I think I will possibly have to purchase extra insurance any way although I can’t do this yet because there’s a small chance I might be absolutely fine (fingers crossed for a miracle.)

Nobody can say if they’ve been through it before though! We don’t have a copy of your t&cs or know anything about your diagnosis.

Was it easy to get through to them when you told them about your new health condition? If it was then you’d be better contacting them now than lying awake scouring documents.

Then you will be in full knowledge of each possible outcome before you visit the doctor.

You’re accusing people of being unhelpful but actually, contacting them now to find out what cover you actually have is much better than doing nothing.

Even with the miracle, you need to declare the diagnosis. Anything less than 200% transparency and they will invalidate your insurance in total. I have annual cover for disability which costs £320, but last year weeks before th policy ran out I was travelling abroad but fell and damaged a finger (actually nearly severed it!), by the point I flew it was fine - still healing but all treatment completed and no risk at all. They charged me £450 EXTRA (more than the cost of the policy) because if that. I had no choice but to pay. They are al the same. I have moved to another insurer, but I am under no illusions they would have done the same. It's a piss take, because you have no choice to not take out insurance (unless you are an idiot) but they do everything they can to refuse claims or up costs on spurious grounds.

Whilst I can't answer your question sorry, travel insurance is actually quite a minefield when you look into it with a medical condition.

It certainly is not as straight forward as you think.

As pointed out, you have to declare the medical condition and they charge a top up premium for this or refuse to cover you. But if you are actually fit to fly they won't pay out for not taking the holiday either.

I hope you get it all sorted out.

I disagree, I’m pretty sure plenty of families have unfortunately been in a similar situation to us. Unless I’ve misunderstood the point of a public forum (which I understand isn’t a legally binding document!) I don’t see anything wrong with asking about other peoples experiences of travel insurance, if not only to inform me of where to shop for my next travel insurance!

Did you tell them of the diagnosis when you got it? If not you're up shit creek without a paddle because they won't cover cancellation if you hadn't previously told them (as the premium would've probably gone up or the condition excluded).

If you did, the 5k is likely to be a policy limit rather than an individual limit. They will also question why the other members of the party can't travel so will unlikely cover the cost of the whole holiday if other travellers could still travel.

Yes totally agree, I will 100% be informing them of my current predicament. To be fair I understand why I might be more of a risk and why they might increase the premium, I will probably shop around if I’m allowed to fly but I’m expecting to pay more.

I haven’t told them yet as I don’t know too much about my condition (it’s been days of dealing with and understanding what my condition might entail). I’m in no doubt that they will cover at least the £5000 cancellation as I’ve had the policy in place for a while and this is completely unexpected.

You needed to tell them at the time of diagnosis though, or in my experience you do.

But then, your policy might be different. As I said, we don’t know what it says.

The point of asking on a forum is not to just act incredulous when someone gives advice to call your insurer. I believe you should probably have done so within 24 or 48 hours or whatever the policy states. If you haven’t and your medical records show you had the new diagnosis and didn’t tell them then they won’t pay the £5k probably

Nope. If you didn't tell them that you'd been diagnosed they are well within their rights to refuse cover entirely and cancel your policy. They certainly won't deal with a cancellation claim for a condition that was already known to you.

You have to tell them of any investigations not just diagnosis, so you should have informed them a while ago and they will use that against you.

The likely outcome is they will void your policy and you won't be covered at all.

What, even if I only found out two days ago 😂 Ok!!👌

I will absolutely ring them. But I don’t see anything wrong harm in seeing if anyone has had to cancel their holiday before and their experience.

Scrap that, I haven’t even been given a diagnosis yet. I’ve been given a vague “it could be this/it could be that”. I need to go back next Thursday for a definitive answer or at least confirmation whether I can fly or not.