Just before last season kicked off, I got a new travel insurance policy. It was one of those that came with your bank account or credit card, and dutifully advertised that it covered for winter sports.
Having moved out of the UK a few months ago I was no longer covered by the insurance provided by work, available only as it was and still is for residents of the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. I had survived not doing any serious travelling for which I might have needed the cover, especially the snowsports bit, but with winter fast approaching I was beginning to think seriously about what could happen when skiing.
There are few remaining insurance providers to provide cover for skiing including off piste, without a guide and outside of resort boundaries, which was the level of cover I had previously. Effectively, if you are on skis, you are covered by the insurance, and a helicopter will come and rescue you and your broken leg wherever you may be on the mountain (a gross oversimplification, but you get the point). I touched on this on the piece I wrote at the beginning of the season, but since the COVID-19 pandemic insurance companies are trimming the fat of snowsports cover in order to buck up spiralling books; therefore to have this unambiguous, no-questions-asked guarantee of cover was a huge relief.
Exploring one travel insurance policy, I was reminded of the ski insurance minefield that exists out there, especially in relation to one key question: with or without a guide?
Doing my due diligence, I dug up the paperwork to go along with my shiny new insurance policy and set about digging into the small print. After pages and pages of the usual insurance spiel, I found what I was looking for, unhelpfully buried amidst plenty of other unrelated cover:
"skiing [is covered] (including skiing outside the area of normal compacted snow or ski slope i.e. off-piste) when accompanied by or under the instruction of a qualified guide ..."
That couldn't be right. To me, this read as cover is only provided if I was skiing either off piste or on piste with a guide. Skiing off piste with a guide is completely understandable, it is a fairly common occurrence in plenty of travel insurance policies, probably in fact the standard.
But skiing on piste with a guide? I'm not sure I could pay a guide to ski with me on piste ... The most literal definition of a mountain guide is an IFMGA-qualified guide who is qualified to escort clients and assume liability when skiing, hiking, climbing and mountaineering in some of the world's toughest conditions, including Antarctica and Everest. I know the run down from après can get a bit hairy but what sort of insurance policy is requiring a guide like that to escort me down a green run?!
You will forgive me for being a little obstinately literal with my understanding of this clause, but literal is what travel insurance policies are built on. Good insurance companies - of which there are many - will use slight ambiguity to favour the client, with bad ones using it to pocket as much money as possible. But unambiguous clauses like this leave much to be desired.
In the end, I phoned the insurance provided and simply asked "is this right?" The response was "yes", although they did concede that their understanding of "guide" meant a qualified instructor rather than a full blown mountain guide.
Even with this clarification, the situation is not improved. A vast majority of skiers don't utilise instructors when they ski; I don't have the data to hand, but I would be willing to bet that at least 75% of UK skier days did not involve a guide or instructor this season.
To me, it is shocking that such a huge swathe of the market can be cut off from an insurance policy in this way. In my opinion, I would argue that it is exclusionary enough to warrant serious consideration as to whether this policy can be advertised as "including winter sports cover" at all.
Alongside providing insurance for my credit card here in Ireland, the insurance company in question have begun supplying insurance for credit card providers in the UK, too. As if there are not enough reminders to encourage you to read and understand your travel insurance policy, this massive downgrade to the quality of insurance being offered is simply another one.
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