Travel Metrics: Consumer Approaches to Travel Insurance and Assistance in the UK

Finaccord’s report titled Travel Metrics: Consumer Approaches to Travel Insurance and Assistance in the UK offers detailed and unique insights into the behaviour of UK consumers in the context of travel insurance and assistance. Based on a survey of over 1,000 consumers in the UK carried out in the second and third quarters of 2017, the research quantifies the proportion of UK consumers who undertake insurable travel and the proportion that acquire travel insurance, segmented by age and annual household income. It also investigates and quantifies the following important metrics:

• the general types of policy that consumers acquire (i.e. annual policies, single-trip policies or packaged policies such as those bundled with a travel ticket or payment card);

• the specific types of policy that consumers acquire (differentiating between standard cover and non-standard products such as policies designed especially for business travellers, gap-year or student travellers, travellers with pre-existing medical conditions etc.);

• consumer perceptions with regards to the risks covered and assistance services provided by their policy;

• the distribution channels and interfaces that consumers use to take out travel insurance and, for those buying online, the type of device used (i.e. a laptop or desktop computer, a tablet or a mobile phone);

• and the prompts that cause consumers to take out travel cover (e.g. prompts embedded in online booking systems, e-mail adverts, web chat etc.).

Finally, the report analyses claims frequency for travel insurance, including data for the types of claim submitted and for acceptance rates, and ranks major providers of insurance and assistance according to the frequency with which they are identified by consumers as the provider of their policy. Furthermore, many of the results from the latest research are compared with those of Finaccord’s previous study from 2014, thereby showing significant trends over time.

The report can be used in one or more of the following ways:

• to understand the extent to which UK travellers acquire travel insurance and the types of policy that they are most likely to buy;

• to identify the most important demographic segments for travel insurance;

• to evaluate the opportunities for distributing travel insurance through channels other than the travel trade such as airlines, automotive associations, banks, insurance aggregators, supermarkets and direct purchase from insurers;

• to assess the apparent consumer awareness and utilisation of major providers of travel insurance in the UK;

• to understand claims experience for travel insurance in the UK, how this varies by type of policy and customer, and what this might mean for the general profitability of this sector.

For further information about this research, please access the table of contents and series prospectus by clicking on the corresponding links to the left-hand side of this page, or e-mail [email protected].