There is a widely held idea that once you get beyond a certain age, you won’t be able to get travel insurance any more. Just like the idea that life insurance companies get jittery when you have anything that’s even remotely likely to affect your ability to live a full and active life. While this is true to some extent – actuaries will always be actuaries – there have been significant changes in the travel insurance industry recently that mean that even if your ticker is a bit dodgy, someone will trust you to go away and not expire before you get back.

There are two “problem” audiences for travel insurers, the old (read over 65s, not that old these days, but old perceptions are difficult to get rid of) and people that have medical problems before they travel.

Economic realities mean that insurance companies would be mad to discriminate against older people as they are the ones with both the money and the time to travel. There are still age limits on insurance these days but they’re more likely to be around 100 than 65. It’s unlikely that there will be hoards of centenarians complaining that they can’t get travel insurance. Well, not for the next 20 years or so at least.

Pre-existing conditions are another matter. Many travel insurance companies insist on a call to give you a quote and sometimes require an additional one to a specialist in order to determine the nature of the condition. This is not great as the people involved often have very personal stories and they don’t necessarily want to go through a medical questionnaire with someone in a call centre before being turned down anyway.

World First now offers a screening questionnaire that can be completed anonymously and discreetly. It saves time, a certain amount of embarrassment and no small amount of money. Just click the “pre-existing condition” button in the online questionnaire and you’ll go directly to a series of questions that will help determine the best product for you. Job done.

You can of course ring the call centre and you’ll talk to someone who knows what they’re doing and is tactful. It’s always better to talk to a specialist.

Related posts:

1. So what does travel insurance actually cover?
2. Must you take the insurance your travel agent tries to sell you?
3. The true cost of cheap travel insurance
4. Free travel insurance with your home insurance
5. No tax increases for World First travel insurance customers.

Tags: health, holiday, medical conditions, seniors, Travel insurance

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Travel insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.