Travel Insurer - 'Insurefor.com' - are they still in business? Don't respond to any communications.

claireellen

I have a travel insurance policy with 'Insurefor.com' and need to update them on medical conditions.  I have been calling and calling - on hold for an hour, an hour and a half - and live chat doesn't work.  The travel date is 10 days away and if I can't update the policy then the policy will be invalid.  I can see from reviews posted about the company that many, many people are having the same problems as me and this seems to have been the case for a while.  Does anyone know what their current situation is?  Why they seem to have gone awol?  If I can't get this sorted I will have no choice but to buy another policy elsewhere, which I can ill-afford to do.  Any info would be much appreciated.

Annemos

Good evening, claireellen.

Just a thought. Buried on their website I found this bit below. 

Have you tried this number?  If you are already calling that, I don't know what else to suggest. 

(Staysure also says on Trustpilot that it is taking on a lot of new staff to cope with the volume of calls. It is perhaps an industry-wide problem? People are sometimes waiting on the phone for ages.)

I hope you get sorted out one way or another. 

===============================================

https://www.insurefor.com/frequently-asked-questions/

Do I have to declare my medical conditions?

No, but if you needed to make a claim for medical costs and your claim related in any way to a pre-existing medical condition, it wouldn’t be covered.

Declaring your medical condition when you get a quote gives you the opportunity to go through our simple medical screening system to see if we can provide cover for your condition. You can do this online and get an answer in just a few clicks. Or if you prefer to speak to someone, just call on 0343 658 0220 (open 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday) and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Some conditions can be covered free of charge, and some will add an extra premium to your policy. But you’ll have peace of mind that you’ll be covered if you need to see a doctor abroad.

Annemos

Eye-opening really. 

Rock Insurance Services Ltd in Crawley is connected to all these I think: 

MRL Insurance Direct   phone  0343 658 0230

Travel Republic 0343 658 0240   

And then yours  insurefor 0343 658 0220 


Just wondering why there are so many "trading styles". And I wonder if they are all basically handled out of the same call centre? (MRL documentation looks rather similar to insurefor)

user1977

Annemos said:

Just wondering why there are so many "trading styles". And I wonder if they are all basically handled out of the same call centre?

Probably. But nothing unusual or suspicious about that, plenty of other insurance brands are part of larger groups.

DullGreyGuy

Annemos said:

Just wondering why there are so many "trading styles". And I wonder if they are all basically handled out of the same call centre? (MRL documentation looks rather similar to insurefor)

Its very common and in particular in the travel insurance space. 

DLG back in the day use to have Churchill (lower end of mass market), Direct Line (mass market) and Privilege (mass-exclusive) as own brands and then over 30 partnership brands like RBS, Nationwide, Tesco, Peugeot... there were even some football clubs. Own brands were intended to appeal to different customer bases, partnerships were marketing deals to tap into the partner's customer base.

Towergate used to have a deal with Axa which allowed anyone to come along and say they wanted to setup a new brand of travel insurance and as long as your projected sales were under £1m and no major changes to T&Cs were wanted then Towergate could approve it themselves without reference to Axa and set you up as an Appointed Representative of theirs and so a rather light regulatory approval. 

Annemos

That last paragraph is very interesting, if a bit scary!

(Sorry, I have not managed to work out how we attach a highlighted paragraph! I tried it once and it went very badly wrong! I have not dared try to do it again!) 

The Travel Republic name looks like it would appeal to trekking and backpacking folks. I imagine you can do a lot with the marketing. 

DullGreyGuy

Annemos said:

That last paragraph is very interesting, if a bit scary!

But you have to remember that Axa was always the company ultimately on risk so if the startup folds the policy is still valid and you are still covered by Axa (which is why insurers are authorised by the PRA whereas intermediaries by the FCA, both are regulated by the FCA).

If there is a miss-selling issue etc you still have the ability to complain to the FOS etc as they are an AR of an FCA regulated entity, its the risk Towergate take on by appointing a company as an AR.

The insurance market is very difficult to get into, especially as an actual insurer rather than an intermediary. There is actually more of a push to lower the barriers as the old established players aren't innovative, are crippled with legacy systems and can survive on their brandnames. Even Lloyds of London have introduced a "syndicate in a box" concept to enable those with new ideas to create a small insurance company quickly backed by the capital in the existing market names.

Annemos

Thanks DullGreyGuy, I have noticed the Prudential Regulatory Authority thing on policy documentation. 

But I did not know what it meant. 

Can we say, that any normal travel, car or home insurance policy sold in the UK will always be honoured even if an interim company in the chain goes bust? 

(Even if the top Insurer is foreign company or a foreign branch?)

Or is it more complicated that that? 



Just to say......

Innovation and Digital Transformation is all well and good. But if it adds to poor Customer Service issues like some of those found within the MGA delegated Authority Set-up, then I remain worried. 

FCA has already highlighted potential MGA issues in this document:  (and I have encountered some of them myself)

https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/thematic-reviews/tr15-7-delegated-authority-outsourcing-general-insurance-market


Communications can also be a big issue, I think. Not everything can be done on-line for a domestic consumer. (That's how this post started.) 


Sometimes I think that when all the companies are working with each other within these extended chains, the companies consider each other as their "Customers/Clients". Rather than us, the actual domestic consumer with the policy. 

That's big business, I suppose. Maybe it works most of the time? But it can be a type of hell for us when it all goes wrong.


Thank Heaven for the Financial Ombudsman Service and their cases that we can utilise for help on our side and also yourself and this website. 

DullGreyGuy

We used to just have the Financial Services Authority which looked over all aspects of FS companies and was slightly confusing sharing its TLA with the Food Safety Authority. Post credit crunch it was decided to split the FSA up into the PRA that would be responsible in ensuring core FS companies remain solvent by holding enough capital, valuing its assets appropriately etc. Any bank, insurer etc has to be authorised by the PRA.

The FCA was then setup to ensure the market works and ensure consumers are protected. They regulate all FS companies but also authorise intermediaries etc and those non-core companies that aren't authorised by the PRA. One easy way of telling if you are dealing with an insurer or an intermediary is looking to see if the PRA or FCA are listed as their authoriser.

The risks of a policy not being honoured is very slim but would never say 100%, there is always the outside chance of a cascade of issues and the PRA authorised insurer having not been passed the details and/or payment. Generally it should come out in the wash and the FSCS covers intermediaries as well but will always hedge my bets and say its 99.9% likely rather than 100% likely.

As noted though, the FSCS provides 90% coverage on non-compulsory general insurance so if Aviva did go down people wouldnt be 100% covered. There are also some gaps in the FSCS cover, or was last time I looked, as for example annuities are covered 100% however looking in the fine print it says indexation of annuities may not be.

The FCA report covers both MGAs and other forms of outsourcing and to be honest its not exactly surprising. Since the report there has been more done on the outsourcing of major functions, though not sure if this includes coverholders/MGAs nor the threshold at which the extra reporting etc kicks in... a small deal with a new MGA for a large insurer is unlikely to trigger anything.

Its not just a UK problem though... despite MGA being a US term (UK's term was coverholder) they also use "Programs" and when these things come up for tender its very backwards in terms of who is calling the shots, the intermediary telling the insurer what the frequency and format data will be provided in (and subsequently rarely hitting their own frequency). Very much the tail wagging the dog but some of this business has been highly profitable for years and so a queue of insurers willing to be wagged.