Cancer & Travel Insurance

In this call for input the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) invite views on the challenges firms face in providing travel insurance for consumers who have, or have had cancer, together with the rationale for pricing differentiations in quoted premiums.

In May 2016, the regulator published an Occasional Paper exploring issues around ‘Access to Financial Services in the UK‘ (PDF). The FCA analysed the issues they identified through the lens of five major social and technological trends. One of these trends was the increasingly segmented markets in insurance.

The paper recognised how some consumers who had good access to insurance products in the past can find they have become marginalised. The FCA want to understand how consumer outcomes can be improved in this area, whether by traditional methods or innovation.

Who this applies to

The regulator are seeking views, supported by examples and evidence where possible, of the challenges firms face in providing travel insurance for consumers who have, or have had cancer, and the reasoning for pricing differentiations in quoted premiums.

What you need to do

Please send us your comments by 15 September 2017:

You can also:

email accesstoinsurancecfi@fca.org.uk or
write to: Access to Insurance: Call for Input, Strategy and Competition Division, Consumer Insight Department, Financial Conduct Authority, 25 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HS

Next steps

This represents the first stage in the FCA’s broader engagement with stakeholders to improve our understanding of the issues facing vulnerable consumers accessing different financial markets. While this paper focuses on travel insurance for people who have, or have had, cancer, the findings will broadly apply to other pre-existing medical conditions, and also to other protection products.

In late 2017 they expect to publish a Feedback Statement with our findings and set out our next steps in light of the responses.

Source: FCA

Call for Input: Access to insurance (PDF)