What does travel insurance cover if you have to cancel or interrupt your trip if a close relative back home dies or suffers acute illness or injury?
For information relating to policies purchased prior to 14 July 2021 12:00am UTC, please check the Policy Wording provided with your purchase. You can contact us if you need this sent to you again. For policies purchased from 14 July 2021 please see below.
Your policy can help if you must cancel or interrupt your trip because a close relative back home is unexpectedly hospitalized or dies due to a sudden illness, such as COVID-19, or sudden injury.
If you’re concerned that you may need to cancel your trip because your family member catches Coronavirus (COVID-19), you should consider the Explorer Plan, which has a separate Coronavirus Travel Costs benefit that may offer cover for cancellations in these cases. You can check out our Coronavirus article which has more information, including benefit limits, conditions and exclusions.
We define your close relative to be any of the following:
Your spouse/de facto partner, fiancé, fiancée, parent, parent-in-law, daughter, son, adopted or de facto daughter or son, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, brother, sister, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, grandchild, grandparent, step-parent, step-brother or step-sister, step-son, step-daughter or guardian normally residing in your country of residence.
You can claim the costs of your pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses, tours, accommodation, transportation and tuition/courses and travel agency cancellation fees that you have to cancel before leaving home, where the event that is causing you to claim has occurred after you have purchased your policy.
If you’re already traveling, there’s cover for additional travel expenses (up to the cost of an economy class airplane ticket) to return home early to be with your family, where the event that is causing you to claim has first occurred after you have purchased your policy and after you served your waiting period.
The policy also provides coverage (when pre-approved) to resume your trip after you return home, as long as it’s before the end date of the policy, as shown on your Certificate of Insurance. The Trip Resumption benefit is not available for any Covid-19-related cases, however.
If you are already traveling and need to interrupt your trip, you must:
For all other expenses, you can make a claim online and provide a written medical diagnosis from the attending physician and, if applicable, the death certificate to support your claim.
Also be aware that for any Trip Cancellation or Trip Interruption claim submitted you will have to pay a per-person excess for each claimable event.
Your insurer will not pay for your expenses:
The policy isn’t designed to cover everything, so take the time to read the terms, conditions, limitations and exclusions in the Policy Wording for full details so that there are no surprises if you need to use it. If you’re not sure if something is covered, get in touch.
We’re here to help if you have a question about travel insurance. We’re available:
For policies purchase on or after 2 December 2018:
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For policies purchased before 2 December 2018:
Before your trip, check to see if there are current travel alerts for your destination – you can also view the latest government advice
Gaza−Israel conflict: For travellers in, or planning on travelling to, Israel or the Palestinian Territories, please see our travel alert with more information.