Insurance companies biggest winners

[mike4scuba]

The holiday insurance companies seem to be the biggest winners this year
All the new policies taken out last year will be expiring soon and nobody was able to travel so max profits.
No sign of them contacting policy holders to ask if they wanted to put them on hold or give a part refund.

[Dinglebert]

Yes but they have provided a level of cover. We have our annual policy and a member of our party for 3 upcoming holidays nows has a medical condition meaning they cannot go. The insurance is covering us. No profit for the insurance company with us just a big loss for them.

[captain-codeye]

I would have thought the opposite?

The drop in people taking out single trip cover via travel agents and online would have been mammoth.

Company’s have the same overheads, staff costs etc etc I would imagine the actual payouts are small compared to the fixed costs.

No policy’s taken out is a big loss, I wouldn’t expect an annual policy to be the norm outside of frequent travellers on here.

[Dinglebert]

Originally Posted by captain-codeye

No policy’s taken out is a big loss, I wouldn’t expect an annual policy to be the norm outside of frequent travellers on here.

See more...

A large number of people, myself included, have annual through bank account. Thankfully.

[Claudette]

I doubt very much that holiday insurers have had a bumper year. Firstly they will have had claims to pay out relating to holidays booked before they pulled the ladders up against new claims. They will almost certainly have higher claims handling costs too; claims handling assistants, legal costs, banking, processing, admin costs.

On the premium side, I would presume most people with an annual policy would have cancelled it and had the premiums refunded. More relevantly the insurers will have lost out entirely one the single trip sales which is a much bigger market.

I’d be interested to look at the insurance accounts (which is my profession) but travel insurance is a very small part of the portfolio of a big player (e.g. Aviva) so you can’t see it within the overall accounts and I cannot find any accounts of a specialist. Nevertheless, my punt on how they have fared, is not well.

[TinkTatoo]

I have an annual policy here in Ireland which was due to expire in February and my insurer extended it for an additional 3 months.

[Scotsmomma2]

My annual cost over £800,they wouldn't extend it,but as we'd not had a single trip,they refunded £423.

[tspill]

Not sure about this. Many with annual policies (like me) haven't renewed. So far that is nine months loss from me.
Plus very few (compared to normal) have been booking holidays so single trip policy sales will also be well down.

[Bartswife]

The insurance company we always used let us down last year when we put in a claim. They’ve lost out future business, will never go with them again. Took out extra cruise cover and they wouldn’t pay for missed ports, said it wasn’t covered. We missed half our holiday due to having to stay on the ship as caribbean islands wouldn’t let us dock in early March last year due to Covid. Luckily P&O gave us half the cost of the holiday back so we booked again. If we had been confined to cabin due to illness we were covered but not to being confined to the ship due to a pandemic.