Insurers at their best at a shocking time

General Insurance is often demonised even before it has a chance to mess up after a natural disaster. Over the years, I have seen many heartwarming cases where insurers have gone out of their way to help customers and their communities in their hour of need.

It was for this reason that I worked to help create the Mansfield Awards for Claims Excellence coming up to 10 years ago. One of the claims that triggered this was the way QBE really stepped up and helped, not only their own insureds but others following what became known as the Egyptian Bus Roll Over. In fact, it was two busloads of people effected as people from the second bus went to the aid of the first and that bus collapsed on top of some of the rescuers.

We see it again with many travel insurers as it has been reported that insurers have beefed up their support for passengers stranded in the Middle East as a result of retaliatory strikes by Iran following the attack on them.

One example of the wonderful effort being put in is PassportCard who are currently supporting 50,000 members who are unable to return to their home country. The primary focus is assisting them with prescription medication and maternity cases, making sure no one feels alone during such challenging times.

It has been a very challenging time for travel insurance with Covid-19 not being that long ago.

Nevertheless, many insurers are really stepping as much as possible and they are to be congratulated.

One point I would make, is that like terrorism, and pandemics, war risk is something that is not a standard coverage in day-to-day policies. This is universal from marine, to property, to travel insurance. The exposure is potentially so great it would greatly increase the cost of insurance and for most of the time and most of the people it is not necessary. Coverage in some classes, such as marine insurance, war risk is able to be purchased but it is expensive, and many do not purchase the coverage until the risk is eminent and then of course the premium naturally has to go up in line with that increased risk.

As such travellers will find that they do not have coverage for war risk. For the same reason, most airlines and non refundable accommodation houses are not covering any additional cost incurred by stranded passengers.

It does seem a long way off, but I for one hope that this conflict, and the dozens of others around the world that are occurring at the moment, are over soon and we can all live in peace and prosperity.