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Travel insurance for climbing overseas 19-Nov-2014 At 11:24:30 AM Damien Gildea

Message

On 19/11/2014 Reg wrote:
>a recent email from insure4less:
>
>"We have been in negotiations with our underwriters over the past few
>weeks as they have been experiencing some significant losses from our alpine
>plan to the US / Canada.

That's a bummer, but it would be interesting to know more about that development. It underlines the problems with climbing and expedition insurance.

A similar thing happened with insurance for polar expeditions some years ago. The pool of climbing-specific policies is relatively small, by worldwide insurance standards. With climbing and expeditions being inherently risky, a higher rate of claims stands out on the books as financially unviable compared to their regular business.

Expedition insurance went from wildly expensive 20 years ago, to really quite cheap 10 years ago, to almost impossible to get at the current moment. Hopefully it can settle somewhere in the middle where it remains viable for both sides.