Specialist Travel Insurance Webinar 2024

A challenge faced by many living with aplastic anaemia and other rare bone marrow failures is understanding how they can access travel insurance. We are bringing you this webinar hosted by Specialist Travel Insurance Expert, Garry Nelson from All Clear Travel Insurance to answer your questions.

Note: the captions on this video are auto-generated and may contain minor errors.

Watch the webinar

Webinar summary: 

Specialising in assisting individuals with pre-existing medical conditions to obtain travel insurance that suits their requirements, Garry Nelson from All Clear Insurance will give you an overview of travel insurance for people with rare diseases. 

This webinar covers, how and when to apply for travel insurance, what you need to consider when travelling and how to ensure you are getting the right cover.  There will be an opportunity for questions however, if you have any questions or comments that you'd like Garry to consider, please do submit your question when you sign up for the event.

Meet Garry Nelson

Following a long career in sports, Garry entered mainstream business in 2002, where he was an MD for a promotions company before switching roles to become Head of Marketing at AllClear in 2011.  Highly successful in that role, Garry built and developed a multi award-winning team that has seen substantial levels of growth year on year.

Promoted to Head of Corporate Affairs for AllClear Insurance Services and InsureandGo in November 2022, Garry is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a committee member of the BIBA Access to Insurance Group and  has been invited by BIBA to advise the UK Government All  Party Parliamentary Group on travel insurance and Covid.

Prior to this Garry spent 18 years as a professional sportsman, during which time he wrote two best-selling, highly acclaimed books.  Garry retired to head-up  the London office of the Professional Footballers Association, followed by a full-time media role with ITV Sport.

Travel insurance Q&A

In case you don't have time to watch the full recording, we've summarised Garry's responses to the questions in this Q&A Summary...

Who are All Clear?

All Clear specialises in medical travel insurance. Our core market is people with medical conditions of any age. In most instances we should be able to provide a quote for people with aplastic anaemia or a related condition. We’ve been around since 2000 and have won lots of awards for our customer service and accessible travel insurance products.

How do you offer insurance to people with complex medical situations?

We spend more time on the telephone! People want to speak to a person. On average our call times are 20 minutes – that gives you an idea of how complex some of the situations are.  We have a bespoke relationship with Verisk who provide our screening system, and very rarely we might need to refer to them. We also have the option of going to our underwriter, Zurich, to consult on very complex scenarios.  

What makes travel insurance more expensive?

Prices depend on your age, the location (some places come with a higher financial risk) and the length of time you want to go away for. Most insurers don’t like covering very high risk. A cruise is more of a risk and more expensive, so that kind of travel will make your premium more expensive. Older people are more likely to be more impacted by a medical emergency than a younger person. Some places will stop offering cover altogether at a certain age, what we do is we add a small loading amount for each year.

How expensive can it get?

All Clear offer premiums of up to £6k. That might sound like an awful lot of money to spend on travel insurance! But, for example, that might be the last time a very ill 90 year old goes to visit their family in Australia! If you were them, the cost would be worth it.

How can the premium cost more than the holiday???

If you spend just one night in hospital in the USA, even if you’re out the next morning, that will likely cost £10,000.

Someone I know broke her wrist when she was visiting her stepsister in California – the 15 minute private ambulance ride cost £4,500. We’re one of the few providers that will still cover trips to the states for people with medical conditions.

I’m an American with aplastic anaemia living in the UK. Could I get travel insurance to go to the US?

You need to be a UK resident. The definition in our policy is on the website: you need to have lived in the UK for at least 6 months, you need a permanent address in the UK and you need to be registered with a UK GP. When you call in and they hear your accent just make sure you clarify that and it’ll be fine. A lot of people ask us who live in Spain but are UK passport holders – but we can’t cover them. We cover travel to and from the UK – your journey has to start and finish here. 

How does your company work with the underwriter?

All Clear provide the insurance products and customer service via our website and call centre. Zurich, our underwriter, are the company who pay out if you end up having to make a claim.

When you pay your insurance claim, 20% goes to the government in tax, and then a percentage of the remainder goes to the underwriter.

So it’s our job to make sure we’re charging people a fair price for the insurance that they feel is affordable, but also to make sure we don’t end up in a position where the cost of the claims is too high for the underwriter to cover with the income we’re giving them. If that happened, our business would be in trouble.

Which countries are more expensive to get insurance to travel to?

The States represents a particular issue, so does the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada.

To a certain extent even Spain, the most popular destination. People might not be aware that the claims costs in Spain are twice what they are in Portugal. You wouldn’t expect that because the flight home is about the same flight time.

In Spain if you tripped and fell in the street, you would end up in a public hospital receiving the same treatment as a local. But if you tripped by the pool in a hotel and someone called the front desk, there’s a good chance you’d find yourself in a private medical facility. The public hospital treatment isn’t necessarily free, but the private is going to be much more expensive – which is one reason we have higher claims from Spanish holidays, and therefore the premium is going to be higher.

Egypt has become popular and Turkey. You’re going to end up in private medical facilities in those places too so the financial risk is higher, and the distance and cost to fly you home if needed is higher too.

Why has the cost of travel insurance gone up in recent years?

There are a few reasons, all related to the Covid pandemic. Of course during the pandemic claims for cancelled travel plans went through the roof. That meant the capacity for specialist underwriting decreased 50%. As demand increased, the prices went up.

The pound also bombed against the dollar, and medical costs increased, which meant claims got more expensive.

And of course many people cancelled their travel and therefore their insurance polices, so income went down. The percentage of people who had to make a claim also increased. People were so determined to enjoy themselves after lockdown they partied harder on holiday and fell over more often! And more people went travelling with undiagnosed conditions that they were not aware of, because fewer people had been going to the doctor since the pandemic.

Climate change has had a big impact too – for example all the forest fires are terrible for people with lung conditions.

So lots of reasons it’s been a turbulent time and premiums have gone up.

If I buy travel insurance from All Clear, will you know what aplastic anaemia is?

Aplastic anaemia (and related conditions including PNH and Fanconi Anaemia) come up on our system automatically as conditions where we can offer cover (although there is a flag to say we may not be able to cover annual cover for worldwide travel).

All Clear pride ourselves on providing quotes when other companies might not, and on our customer service. I’d really recommend giving us a ring to have a proper chat. A human on the phone will be able to dig deeper and work it out for you.

I’m dependent on having regular blood transfusions. Would I be able to get travel insurance?

That wouldn’t necessarily be a barrier. In fact, if you were having regular monthly blood transfusions that adds less risk than someone who had been pulled in for an emergency blood transfusion. The more stable and recognised the treatment pattern, the less risk that would involve.

If you needed a transfusion as a planned thing while you were on holiday, the insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Is it more cost effective to insure the whole family or to insure a child with aplastic anaemia separately? 

For children under 18 you will need adults on the policy, but if the adult doesn’t have any medical condition that won’t be any issue.

If you have existing cover via your bank or credit card or another company for anyone on the holiday, please please make sure you notify them that you’re travelling with someone who has a medical condition. Because if the reason you cancel the holiday is because of that person’s medical condition, there are instances where your company won’t pay out because you have not informed them.

We do sell travelling companion cover too, which enables you to mitigate that risk by paying a small additional premium.

Do I need to provide evidence of my treatment plan to get a quote?

You wouldn’t be asked what your treatment plan is, there are specific questions, for example whether you’ve had a transfusion, whether you have had a transplant. If you find the questions don’t feel relevant, that’s when you need to be ringing up and having a conversation.

Why doesn’t travel insurance offer no claims bonus discounts, like other kinds of insurance do? 

It works on cohorts rather than on individuals, and the level of claims. Someone might take out a policy for £40 and run up a claim that might run into millions. Unfortunately that will affect the price for everyone who has that condition.

On the plus side, you can make a huge claim and it wouldn’t affect your own price next time on an individual basis. We don’t look at your claims history like they would for car insurance.

Is there a big difference in the type of holiday and the price of insurance? 

If you’re going on a walk down the Camino then the walk would not be an issue. If you’re 87 and you’re going bungee jumping – that would affect the risk rating and therefore the price. There’ s a list of hazardous sports that you can and can’t do on your policy.

Where you’re going is going to affect the price a lot more than what you’re doing. Walking in Yosemite Park as opposed to the Camino is going to be much more expensive, because you’re in America.

I have five separate conditions. Are they best dealt with as a group?

I would never ever advocate you taking out a policy and leaving certain things off. Especially if they’re related. Declare all your conditions. We deal with cases where people have 13 or 14 conditions – there is no upper limit. Please don’t leave anything out or try and cover different things with different policies. If you do need to make a claim, you don’t want there to be any ambiguity about what’s covered and what isn’t.

There are policies out there that will say “we will cover you but not for these conditions.” I’m not criticising those providers, but we don’t think that’s the best way. You don’t want any ambiguity about what’s connected to the condition if you have to make a claim – especially if you’re going to America where the costs are absolutely off the scale. I know it can be a pain in the butt to declare everything – but please do it!

My partner and I have different conditions – would you recommend separate policies or a joint one? 

If you’re travelling together then it would make sense to have it tied to one policy – just because in theory that would save you some time and admin. But you could do what you’d like.

Can you save money by excluding specific things from your policy?

You might consider the risk around cancellation. If you’re feeling well and you’ve decided to go to Spain next week for a short break, with our policies you can just decide to exclude cancellation, so you can decide “there’s no chance of anything happening to me in a week, so I’ll exclude cancellation and bring the price down”. But if you’re booking a fancy cruise and you’re going to have to pay a lot of the balance a long way in advance of the trip, you’re going to want to make sure you’ve got cancellation coverage because the risk is greater.

If you’re diagnosed with a condition between taking out the policy and the point of travel, should you inform the insurance company?

Absolutely yes – this is really important. Even a change in medication I would advise you to let us know. Often we’ll just say “Thanks we’ll add that to your notes” but if there’s a significant change, there could be an additional premium we need to check if the change has affected the risk. There’s a danger, depending on the level of intent, that your company won’t pay out if you make a significant claim connected to something you didn’t tell us about.

What if we’re being investigated for something but we don’t have a diagnosis yet?

Since the pandemic we’ve had more and more enquiries about undiagnosed conditions, because people have not been able to get the appointments or the minor surgery they need to properly diagnose the issue. You do need to let us know that you’re undergoing some investigation and don’t know what the outcome is. Some insurers would pull your cover at that point because they can’t assess what the risk is. We don’t do that. We'd likely cover you for everything that you’ve declared so far that we know about but for the undiagnosed condition, if there’s a claim as a result of that then you won’t be covered. Then it’s up to you as an individual to decide how much of a risk it is that that thing is going to cause an issue. If you don’t want to take that risk, we would allow you to cancel.

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