Making A Travel Insurance Claim
March 5, 2009 by Jack
If you have a problem with an insurance claim, check your policy carefully first of all, to make sure that your insurer is not entitled to withhold all or part of any payment. This could be because:
• you have an excess on your policy
• you have an exclusion in your policy
• someone has overcharged you for their services. In this case, your insurer might refuse to meet all the costs of your claim and you will have to meet the balance yourself.
If you want to make a complaint, write to your insurer, giving details of your complaint, and how you would like it to be resolved. If you are not satisfied with the response, make a formal complaint, using your insurer’s complaints procedure.
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the formal complaints procedure, consider taking the complaint further. All insurers must be covered by the rules of the financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). This means that if you have a complaint about an insurer, you can take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This is a free service available to policyholders who have already followed their insurer’s complaints procedure. The Financial Ombudsman will try to resolve the complaint through mediation. If the dispute cannot be resolved this way, the Financial Ombudsman will begin a formal investigation. The final decision given at the end of this investigation is binding on your insurer, but if you do not agree with it.
If you bought your insurance from a travel agent or tour operator as part of a package holiday, the rules are slightly different. You can complain to the Financial Ombudsman if your complaint is about the insurance company with whom you have your policy. However, if your complaint is about the way you were sold the policy by the travel agent or tour operator, you will probably need to go to court if you want to take your complaint further.
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of this complaint, complain to the Financial Ombudsman.
If you have tried all the options for resolving your complaint through the complaints procedures, but have not met with success, or your complaint is against a travel agent or tour operator not covered by the FSA’s rules, you may want to consider taking legal action. However, you should only consider going to court as a last resort. This is because the amount of compensation a court may award you could be reduced if you have not tried other ways of resolving the problem before taking legal action.
Before taking legal action, you need to consider whether you have sufficient evidence. You will have to prove that your claim is covered by your insurance policy and you may have to provide expert evidence.
