'Cancel for any reason' Coverage | Travel Insurance Review

This coverage provides up to 100% of your total trip costs if you have to cancel your trip for any reason not listed in the standard coverage.

Contents (click to jump down)
What does ‘Cancel for any reason’ cover?
Understanding Cancellation Penalties
Important notes about this coverage
What type of policy covers this?
How much coverage does each company provide?
Summary

Let us tell you a story

Madeline and her friends from college had long planned a tour of the pyramids and monuments of Egypt. On Madeline’s 50th birthday, they decided the time had come. So they scheduled flights into Cairo and purchased a package tour.

Just three weeks before their scheduled departure, however, news of political unrest and reports of rioting, looting, and gunfire flashed across their televisions. The U.S. State Department orders non essential personnel and their families to leave the country. Trip cancellation coverage does not apply to situations of political unrest, but having ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage on their travel policies meant that Madeline and her friends could recover their costs and wait for a safer time to travel.

What does ‘Cancel for any reason’ cover?

This coverage provides reimbursement (up to the covered amount) for non refundable trip payments and pre-paid trip deposits if you have to cancel your trip for any reason not covered under the trip cancellation benefit.

This benefit is separate and different from trip cancellation coverage. ‘Cancel for any reason’ coverage is considered a ‘fail-safe’ by many travel insurance buyers who worry they may have to cancel their trip for a reason that is not covered by trip cancellation coverage and want to recover at least a portion of their expenses.

Understanding Cancellation Penalties

Coverage amounts vary from 50-100% depending on the plan and, in some cases, are subject to cancellation penalties. A cancellation penalty is the amount the travel supplier will not refund you if you have to cancel. The cancellation penalty determines the percentage that travel insurance will reimburse less the amount refunded by your travel supplier.

Using the above story as our example:

Madeline’s trip cost $5,000 and tour operator imposes a 50% cancellation penalty if the cancellation occurs no less than two weeks prior to departure.
Madeline cancels and is penalized 50%, or $2,500, by the tour operator who agrees to refund half her trip cost.
Madeline’s travel insurance penalty schedule provides 90% reimbursement if the penalty amount is up to 50% of the trip cost.

Thanks to her ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage, Madeline’s reimbursement looks like this:

Total trip cost	$5,000
Subtract amount penalized by travel supplier (50%)	- $2,500
Amount covered by ‘Cancel for any reason’ (90% of penalty amount)	- $2,250
Madeline loses only	$250

Important notes about this coverage

‘Cancel for any reason’ coverage may be included with trip cancellation coverage or it may be a selectable option that has to be added to a policy (for an additional fee).
This coverage requires purchase within a certain number of days of making your initial trip deposit (see table below).
The cancellation must occur not less than a defined number of days or hours prior to the scheduled trip departure (see table below).
You must insure 100% of all pre-paid travel arrangements that are subject to cancellation penalties or restrictions by the travel supplier.
A few plans have maximum per-person trip cost limits. Specifically, CSA’s Custom Luxe plan limits the per-person trip amount to $10,000.
Any amounts that are refunded by the travel supplier will be deducted from the amount refunded by your travel insurance plan.

What type of policy covers this?

This coverage is exclusively provided in package plans, and not medical plans; in addition, it’s usually an optional coverage that must be selected and added to your travel insurance policy (for an additional fee). Not all travel insurance plans offer this coverage option.

A few plans include ‘cancel for any reason’ automatically:

The Complete plan by MH Ross
The Elite plan by Travel Insurance Services
The Travel Max plan by Travelex
The Premier plan by TravelSafe

How much coverage does each company provide?

Policy	Company	If purchased within	Policy limit*	Penalty schedule	Cancel within
No coverage	Allianz
Custom Luxe Comprehensive	CSA	24 hours	70-100%	See penalty schedule	48 hours
No coverage	FrontierMEDEX
Global Alert Preferred	Global Alert	15 days	75-100% of loss	See penalty schedule	2 days
Global Alert Preferred Plus	Global Alert	15 days	90-100% of loss	See penalty schedule	2 days
No coverage	Global Underwriters
No coverage	HTH Worldwide
Advantage Asset	MH Ross	15 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Advantage Complete	MH Ross	15 days	90-100% of loss	See penalty schedule	2 days
Advantage Bridge	MH Ross	15 days	80-100% of loss	See penalty schedule	2 days
RoundTrip Choice	Seven Corners	10 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Travel Select Advantage	Travelex	21 days	60% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Travel Lite **	Travelex	21 days	95% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Travel Select	Travelex	21 days	60% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Travel Max	Travelex	30 days	50% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Business Traveler **	Travelex		80% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Travel Plus **	Travelex	21 days	95% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Tee, Tour, and Travel	Travel Guard	15 days	50% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
My Travel Guard	Travel Guard	21-30 days	50-75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Sportsman's Travel	Travel Guard	15 days	50% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Adventure Travel	Travel Guard	15 days	50% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Platinum	Travel Guard	15 days	70% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Gold	Travel Guard	15 days	50% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Select Plus	Travel Insurance Services	15 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Select Elite	Travel Insurance Services	21 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Select Basic	Travel Insurance Services	15 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	2 days
Worldwide Trip Protector	Travel Insured	21 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Worldwide Trip Protector Gold	Travel Insured	30 days	75% of loss	No penalty schedule	48 hours
Vacation Classic	TravelSafe	15 days	75-100% of loss	See penalty schedule	2 days

* Subject to cancellation penalty schedule

** Available as optional upgrade

Summary

Considered by many travelers as a ‘fail-safe’ if they have to cancel for a non covered reason
100% of pre-paid travel arrangements that are subject to cancellation penalties must be insured
Some plan benefit are subject to cancellation penalty schedules
The cancellation must occur not less than the number of days defined in the policy