Right smack bang in the middle of last year, we decided to book a family holiday to Southeast Asia. This would have seen us travelling to Bali and beyond for a few short weeks from the middle of this month. As soon as we booked our flights, we got ourselves travel insurance through Southern Cross Travel Insurance (SCTI). Travel insurance is something we always make sure to have when travelling come rain come shine.
At the beginning of the year, COVID-19 began to show its face. As time went by, it became evident that the getaway was not going to happen. Travel advisories started getting put on in place for China and a couple of other parts of the world. Before long, Kiwis were advised to not travel at all and soon after that, the whole world went into lockdown.
With everything being put to a halt due to the pandemic, we started the process of looking at our options for cancelling flights and accommodation. We booked our flights directly through Emirates and they have extended the validity of the tickets for 24 months. Accommodation providers were kind enough to cancel the reservations without penalty.
Cancelling a travel insurance policy
Before cancelling our travel insurance, we first made sure that we weren’t going to be left out of pocket from flight and accommodation cancellations.
After taking a quick look at a handful of travel insurance providers, most have a 14-day cooling-off period. It allows policyholders to cancel within 14 days from the date of purchase and get a full refund (prior to the start of the journey). After the cooling-off period, some providers offer refunds, and some don’t. For example, TINZ does not refund and Cover-More states that they may give a partial refund.
In the case of SCTI, cancellations after the 14 day period are entitled to a refund less a $35 cancellation premium. This is on the provisor that cancellation is made prior to the start date of the journey and that no claims have been made.
Cancelling a SCTI single trip policy is a quick and easy process. All that you need to do is fill out a very short form where you provide the policy number, your date of birth, last name and email address. The next step is confirming the cancellation of the policy (if you are eligible). 2 to 3 days later a refund is issued.
We cancelled our policy well after the 14-day cooling-off period but got a full refund with SCTI stating the following in an email:
Under usual circumstances, when a single trip policy is cancelled more than 14 days after your start date of insurance, (but before your start date of journey), a cancellation premium of $35.00 is deducted from the amount refunded. In recognition of these extraordinary times, we are waiving this cancellation premium. No cancellation premium applies to the Annual Multi-Trip policy.
Why would I bother to write about this you may ask? We had friends and family who were going to spend time with us in Asia. They too had to cancel but a couple of them did not seem bothered about cancelling their travel Insurance policies. They were going to leave them as-is and not bother cancelling because it was going to be ‘too hard’. This just didn’t make sense especially if the provider that they went with was willing to give a refund.
After explaining this to them, they bothered to take action and got their money back. If they had left them as is, they would literally have been giving money away. Money that can go towards, savings, investing or other revenue-generating activities.
No comments yet.