Travel Insurance Medical questionnaire requirements
When you apply for coverage for emergency medical travel insurance your Insurance Broker must determine if you meet the policy requirements. The eligibility requirements can vary between insurers but generally the determining questions are a quick way to predetermine if you fit into their risk profiles.
The qualifying eligibility questions determine your age, if you have Canadian provincial Government health insurance benefits and more importantly; if you have any serious pre-existing health risks. Keep in mind that insurers can only determine health risks from your answers to these questions and because they do not have access to your health records it is very important to reveal all of your “important” health information.
You may be wondering, what is the “important health information” and why does this matter? Important medical information is similar to the medical records your family Doctor records in your health files with some exceptions. The medical questionnaire is designed for the most part, to reveal the more serious health issues and the stability of any medical condition, not minor conditions such as if you have a cold for example.
From the underwriters’ perspective, your health record helps the insurer categorize claims risks that from a historical perspective may result in a claim on the policy. There may be a multitude of factors that were researched prior to setting the cost of the insurance however the quoted premium for the insurance is partly based on your age as well as the likelihood of a claim on the policy for persons with a medical profile similar to yours as well as competitive factors in the marketplace.
When your answers to the questionnaire are entered in the quoting application, the software is programmed either to exclude your health risks or provide a quote. The quote then is based on your answers compared to people in similar age demographics and the risk assessed claims history. The answers you provide also determine if they are willing to accept your health risks and if so, the premiums associated with such risks. Higher risk determinations result in higher quoted premiums or a rejection.
So the information entered by your broker not only determines if the insurer is willing to accept the risks you revealed in the questionnaire, it also determines any additional premiums that are added to the insured cost if your pre-existing risks meet the policy requirements which ultimately determines the quoted premium.
So if the answers you give in the questionnaire determine what the quoted cost to you will be, you may be tempted to not reveal all or lie to your broker to get a lower quote? Doing so may get you into a lower risk category and result in a lower quoted cost, but this is a foolish notion. If you have not provided full disclosure to your medical risk factors and later have a medical emergency that results in a claim on the policy, it may be revealed to the insurer that your actual medical record does not match the answers you provided in the questionnaire which is reason enough for the insurer to deny your claim.