Recommended travel insurance 2023-24

That's great to read Beerandrocks and I hope you have a lovely time.

i used them in june i have liver cancer they are very good i had quotes of over £2000 for a week just for myself i got it from them for £59

Hi there - l haven’t been on here for a while… l am struggling to get a quote. Earlier in the year l went with Saga but they have redefined terminal as being ‘’incurable and will shorten your life.’ As l am in this category, they will not now insure me. If you say ‘no’ to the question where it asks, “have you reached the point where the doctor says you cannot be cured” l’m afraid they would not pay out if you made a claim. If you are going to answer ‘no’ l would advise you to phone the company.  Good luck x

What did you answer for ‘Have you been given a terminal prognosis?’ My cancer is incurable and will shorten my life but l have probably got about 2 years to live. So l have answered ‘No.’ l have just been on this Medical Travel Compare and the cheapest quote is £1,119.29 for Lanzarote for two of us for one week. 

I've just been on a long journey to get travel insurance - I thought I'd share some of it in case it is helpful. I've got Metastatic Breast Cancer and have a 10 day European holiday booked for Sept '24. I spent a long time doing very many travel insurance online quotes (I did not speak to a human) - the cheapest quote I got by far was £877 from All Clear - most companies either said 'no' or quoted c. £1.5k - £2.5k and I thought I would have to cancel my holiday. 

I then followed advice I found on a Macmillan thread about finding travel insurance companies via 'Money Helper Travel Insurance Directory' (I went  to https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/insurance/use-our-travel-insurance-directory and clicked 'View all firms'). I used their 'Refine your search' tool to narrow down the list of companies suitable to my specific situation.

'Money Helper' shows which 'Medical Screening' tool each company uses, many of them use the same one (Verisk) - this explained why the questions I was being asked during online medical screening were the same for many companies and why I was consequently being offered similar quotes. 'Money Helper' says: 'If you are going to get quotes from different providers, try and use firms that use different medical screening companies. This may give you a wider choice of price and/or cover offered'. I therefore made a short-list of the companies on 'Money Helper' which did not use Verisk as a medical screening tool. I'm not suggesting that Verisk is negative in any way - it may be great for many people but it didn't work for my particular situation. I wanted to try companies which used other medical screening tools to see if I could get a cheaper quote for me. 

I decided to ignore the online quote button for my revised list of companies and ring them instead. I rang 'Insure Cancer' first who were helpful but said their process took maybe six weeks (they would send a questionnaire through to my consultant) - this would be too late for my holiday. I then rang 'Insurance With' after my CNS suggested it. I had already done an online quote with 'Insurance With' and the computer had said an outright 'no', however when I telephoned and spoke to a person it made all the difference. The lovely lady I spoke to had access to a sophisticated medical screening tool which recorded the complexities of my circumstance, whereas the online quote tool was simplistic and broad brush. I had an honest conversation with her during which I told her all the details of my medical situation. At the end she said 'are you sitting down?' and I braced myself - her quote came out at £38.13.

Best of luck and best wishes to you all. 

Hi SmileSunshine and a very warm welcome to the online community.

That's great to read that you were able to get travel insurance with insurancewith for a very reasonable price. Thanks very much for taking the time to explain how you narrowed down suitable providers and I hope you have a lovely holiday.

Thank you Latchbrook :)

Thanks so much for sharing all that information. It’s incredibly helpful.

Wishing you well and have a great holiday.

I am very glad you got your insurance and more to the point I am glad you posted this to guide others.   I have been refused insurance and had to cancel a much planned holiday to Canada.   Going through ther questionnaire endlessly has been more depressing than anything else in this journey as it has been the one thing that has made me feel written off.   Enjoy your holiday SmileSunshine!

Thank you for recommending insurancewith. Just got off the phone to them and got cover for £37.41 . Amazing price .