Why is medical travel insurance so expensive? (It doesn’t have to be.)
Our screening system makes medical travel insurance smarter, fairer and more affordable for everyone. Find out how we are able to keep premiums low while providing cover for hundreds of medical conditions.
Finding the right travel insurance can be difficult
It seems the right travel insurance policy, at the right price, is increasingly hard to find. That’s especially true if you are living with a medical condition. Failure to declare your health conditions can invalidate your policy. But the moment you do reveal your medical status, the premium can skyrocket — if you are offered cover at all.
This means the search for travel insurance can be frustratingly arduous for some people, while others pay through the nose for their policy. Some travel-lovers even end up cancelling their holiday. That’s heartbreaking when you’ve been looking forward to a getaway — and potentially very expensive too.
We do things differently. (We mean it.)
In a world where every insurer wants to shout about how unique they are, we walk the talk. We are one of just a small handful of travel insurers that uses a specialist medical travel insurance screening system called Protectif. It’s very different to the one most insurers use. And it’s not unusual for our customers to receive quotes that are hundreds of pounds cheaper than they have been offered elsewhere.
Tell me more…
Medical conditions are a fact of life. Using Protectif allows us to work on the common-sense knowledge that, for most people, there’s very little chance of a pre-existing condition causing problems on holiday. By asking relevant questions about your condition and using a more sophisticated model for calculating risk, we can better understand your condition and provide cheaper, more sensible prices to our customers. Sounds good?
How does the Protectif medical screening work?
It starts with questions about the type of medication that you’re taking, so we can begin to understand what condition you have and how it’s managed. You will then be asked questions about your treatment and — if applicable — your recovery. By going into more detail than the majority of insurers, we can gather a much deeper understanding about the state of your health. But don’t worry. With Protectif, declaring a medical condition doesn’t always mean your premium will increase. We may be able to cover it at no extra cost.
It’s all about judging risk more sensibly.
Sounds complicated? It’s not.
The Protectif screening system has taken years to refine and is constantly being updated. But that doesn’t mean it’s complicated. Everything is refreshingly user-friendly. In most cases the questions shouldn’t take any longer than ten minutes to complete. And you can complete the screening online with step-by-step prompts, or over the phone with our friendly UK customer service team. Either way it’s exactly the same system.
No comparison?
Let’s talk about price comparison websites. They are popular and often incredibly helpful. But if you are looking to compare travel insurance quotes and state that you need cover for a pre-existing medical condition, you won’t find World First in any of your results. That’s because our medical screening system doesn’t integrate with price comparison websites. Unfortunately this means you may not always get the most affordable quote for your medical conditions through price comparison sites — despite their obvious benefits. Indeed in February 2019 Which? published an article where they found price comparison websites to be an average of 107% more expensive than going to a specialist using Protectif as their screening system.
Why does this matter to us?
Providing flexible options for medical travel insurance is part of our DNA. It was a founding ethos back in 1973 and remains integral to this day. And that’s more than marketing babble. We were the first travel insurance provider to offer a policy to travel-lovers living with HIV. And today we can provide cover for thousands of conditions — for all sorts of people, going to all sorts of places. Because arranging travel insurance should never be harder than arranging the actual holiday.
If you feel well enough to travel, you probably are well enough to travel.
