Travel insurance

In light of the impact that coronavirus (COVID-19) is having globally, we’ve made the difficult decision to pause the sale of travel insurance to new customers.

This is a decision that we’ve made very reluctantly. Due to an unprecedented increase in new travel insurance policies over the last month, we want to make sure that all of our existing Co-op Travel Insurance customers receive the service they expect from us.

Important message for existing customers

On 12 March 2020 we made the difficult decision to remove cover for all coronavirus (COVID-19) related events on new policies.

We made this decision in order to ensure that we can continue to meet the needs of our existing customers. The exclusion went live at 23:59 on 12 March 2020.

On the same day, the World Health Organisation also upgraded the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak to a worldwide pandemic.

Based on this, we took the further decision to class the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a “Known Event” in line with our policy terms and conditions from 13 March 2020.

Since then, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has updated its advice for British nationals, as follows:

• 17 March 2020
  • FCO advised against all but essential international travel for all British nationals, for the next 30 days. This advice may yet be extended further, but for now lasts from 17 March to 15 April 2020.
• 23 March 2020
  • All British nationals currently abroad are now being advised to return home from their travels immediately.  

We appreciate that many of our customers will be confused as to where this leaves them.

To help you understand what this means for you, and how your travel insurance policy might help, please take a look at the following information and FAQs.

In recognition of those who are most immediately affected by the above, the focus of these FAQs is on those who are either due to travel between 17 March and 15 April 2020, or who are already abroad.

If you are not due to travel until after 15 April 2020, we ask that you don’t try to call us right now. We are working extremely hard to prioritise customers with urgent issues, including those who are currently abroad.

If you have questions that are not answered and it is urgent, get in touch.

Please remember our claims office is open if you need to make a claim. Read our frequently asked questions for more information.

We'll keep you updated

We’ll continue to monitor the situation closely and we’ll provide updates on our website and social media channels. Our contact centres are open, although please appreciate our teams may be very busy at the moment.

We remain totally committed to providing travel insurance for Co-op customers. This is only a temporary change given the exceptional circumstances.