Travellers 'risking bankruptcy' by failing to declare medical issues

Travellers should get a stark warning about about the possible consequences of withholding health information to insurers, a leading risk expert has said.

Dr Paul Beven, managing director of Healix Risk Rating, told a travel insurance conference in Bristol: “You wouldn’t want to have the warning ‘Failure to disclose a pre-existing condition puts your house at risk’ on every page, but it’s important to get the message across.”

He was speaking in a debate on under-declaration of medical conditions at the ITIC UK conference. Dr Beven told The Independent: “Always make sure you completely declare your medical conditions. It’s easy and simple to do it. And you will get offered a price for your cover, almost without exception.”

Older travellers who have health issues often complain that the cost of insurance is higher than the price of the holiday.

“It may well be,” said Dr Beven. “That’s obviously because there is no relationship between the insurance risk that you represent and the cost of your holiday. So certainly in some circumstances that will be the case.”

​Sian Brightey, ombudsman leader for the Financial Ombudsman Service, told delegates the number of complaints about travel insurance had increased by 8 per cent over the past year - partly driven by the British Airways IT failure in May 2017, and Ryanair’s pilot shortage later in the year.

The service, which regulates travel insurers, currently receives an average of 260 complaints per month. But the proportion of claims upheld in favour of the traveller has declined by 5 per cent: only 36 per cent succeed. “We’re seeing better complaint handling in the front line,” said Ms Brightey.

Also on the panel was Anna Sant, partnership manager for travel insurance at the Moneysupermarket. She said that the leading pre-existing condition is high blood pressure, followed by high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.

Asthma, osteoarthritis and depression are also frequently cited in response to questions about the traveller’s health.

Ms Sant told The Independent: “By answering all the questions on the question set, customers can get the right results for them.”

The call for robust reminders comes as ABTA, the travel association, revealed that 27 per cent of British holidaymakers went abroad last year with no travel insurance or inappropriate cover.

By not telling their insurance companies about pre-existing medical conditions or by taking part in activities not covered by policy, an estimated 9.9 million travellers risk the insurer turning down a claim.

Mark Tanzer, ABTA’s chief executive, said: “Every year we see cases of people falling into difficulty due to travelling without sufficient travel insurance.

“While not declaring existing medical conditions or taking part in activities that aren’t covered are easy mistakes to make, they can be very costly, leaving holidaymakers and their families with expensive medical bills.”

In February, Joyce Kettle, 74, from Northumberland suffered breathing difficulties while aboard a cruise ship off the coast of Mexico. She was airlifted to a hospital near Cancun and underwent an emergency heart operation. When it became clear she did not have appropriate travel insurance, her family had raise over £50,000 to pay medical expenses.

The Foreign Office is running an awareness campaign emphasising that the government will not pay hospital bills for British travellers who fall ill abroad, nor organise medical evacuation.

The average settlement in a travel insurance claim is £1,296, but in some serious cases the cost of medical treatment and repatriation can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.