My clients, a wealthy couple who enjoyed frequent and lengthy holidays abroad, bought an Annual Multi-Trip Travel Policy from me earlier this year.

Several weeks later they’d embark on a trip which immediately voided their policy and left them entirely without cover during a medical crisis.

The trouble was, I didn’t know, and therefore I couldn’t help them.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Annual Multi-Trips are perfect policies for anyone looking to travel at least a couple of times a year. But the clues were there from the start.

When choosing a policy, you choose it by “trip duration” – my clients had a 31 day limit.

That means that whilst you can travel as much as you want, each trip individually can’t exceed 31 days in length.

When this couple left the UK back in February, they were booked to be gone for 17 weeks.

There are two problems here:

1. They didn’t read the policy documents
2. They hadn’t told me their plans

So when the husband developed a hernia, two weeks into the holiday, and flew back to the UK for treatment, and then again for surgery and claimed for a loss of 7 weeks’ holiday, I couldn’t help him – he’d voided his policy the minute he departed on a 17 week trip. It cost this gentleman 16,500 Euros to pay for his mistake.

There’s nothing worse than realising a policy isn’t valid because of something we can’t control.

I know it’s boring, but I’m begging you – read your policy documents before you travel this summer, and make sure you tell your insurance company everything.

At least then there’s a chance to make things right before you travel.