Get ready for take-off!

By Jeremy Clayton

Last year, we wrote an article for the Fly 540 in flight magazine about the importance of Travel insurance and, in particular choosing carefully and ensuring that you know what you are buying. If you flew Fly 540, you may have seen it, if you didn’t, then we like to think it was interesting, but more relevantly, it got us thinking about how we could devise our own insurance plan for our existing and new customers.

The question we asked ourselves was; what is out there and is it good enough for many clients? So, we looked at local and international policies and, whilst there were positive things about each offering, each policy had certain weaknesses which made the overall plan less attractive or placed customers in a potentially difficult situation.

Some limits were better than others, some had better pre-existing medical condition clauses than others. Certain policies allowed the customer to be involved in exciting pursuits when on holiday, others only covered you if you sat on a sunbed for two weeks and drunk orange juice!! Whilst the ‘sunbed’ part has its attractions; the absence of any alcohol for two weeks isn’t such a ‘draw’! Simply, the situation was screaming out for a bespoke, catch all, insurance policy designed for our customers, that brought all the good things under one policy.

The additional problem we faced was the relative high insurance premiums that were being charged by the local market. The rates just seemed to be distorted, so we decided to look at a tri-partite arrangement with our local friends at ICEA Lion, Lloyds of London and ourselves. By doing this, we have developed our own scheme, that combines extensive benefits and limits, including $5m Medical/Repatriation cover and up to $25,000 Cancellation/Curtailment cover, all at UK rates.

Once the wording and rating was approved, we decided to pass the proposal to our marketing guys, and we were suitably impressed with the scheme name – JWS Travel. Why dress it up any more? It is a JWS unique scheme and it covers Travel, hence, JWS Travel. I wish I was in marketing!

There is a lot of information that we can provide to our customers, but in summary it is designed for the following:-

  • Camps/Lodges/Hotels, who want a scheme for their guests and can be rated on the number of bed nights per annum
  • Tour Operators/Travel Agents who wish to offer a bespoke scheme for travellers coming into the region or going out of country
  • Individuals and families looking for short period cover for any trip
  • Individuals and families looking for annual multi trip cover anywhere in the World
  • Group Travel for companies to avoid booking individual travel covers
  • Specific travel cover for those requiring higher Cancellation or Baggage limits than standard

We would be delighted to provide you with terms, rates and conditions on request and provide you with what see as the most comprehensive cover available locally.