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We often don’t think too much about things like travel insurance and what happens if we need to cancel or change our travel plans until there is reason to do so (guilty as charged). As soon as there is a crisis or natural disaster that threatens to thwart our itinerary, that’s when we start taking the whole coverage thing a little more seriously.
However, once actual events have unfolded, such as the current coronavirus outbreak, or natural disasters have struck, they are considered known or foreseeable events and are no longer covered by most travel insurance policies. The exception is an optional upgrade to most travel insurance plans known as “Cancel for Any Reason” coverage, or CFAR.
What is Cancel for Any Reason insurance, actually?
CFAR coverage is typically sold as an optional upgrade to a standard travel insurance plan. And true to its name, it allows you to cancel your trip for any reason. So, if you have a trip planned to a destination that may end up experiencing a coronavirus outbreak or a hurricane (or even something as simple as needing to change your plans due to a noncovered work-related conflict or a nonurgent personal matter), if you purchase travel insurance with the CFAR upgrade, while you won’t be able to make any claims with the base insurance plan, you could still cancel your trip and recuperate some of your costs through the CFAR option.
Standard travel insurance plans are typically referred to as trip cancellation plans and are designed to cover things such as the sudden bankruptcy of a travel company, an unexpected illness, or some kind of unrest or natural disaster that could disrupt your travel. There are also numerous add-ons or stand-alone policies that you can purchase to cover things like lost luggage, medical evacuation, and travel health costs.
“The concept of travel insurance—like almost any insurance product—is to protect against the unforeseen or the unknown risks that are out there,” said Stan Sandberg, cofounder of TravelInsurance.com, a travel insurance comparison and shopping site. Using the example of hurricane season, Sandberg explained that travel insurance provides a number of protections against trip disruption due to a hurricane. “But the key is you need to purchase the insurance before the hurricane becomes a known event or becomes a named hurricane,” he said.
If insurance providers didn’t have that caveat, then the moment a hurricane developed travelers would try to quickly buy an insurance policy so they could cancel their trip and get their money back. With regard to the current coronavirus crisis, travel insurance providers consider it to be a known event as of January 21, 2020 (the date can change slightly depending on the provider, but usually falls sometime between January 21 and January 27, 2020). Travel insurance purchased before those dates will cover disruptions resulting from the outbreak, but any travel insurance purchased after will not.
“The one exception to this is the CFAR [Cancel for Any Reason] optional upgrade,” said Sandberg. CFAR can in fact be purchased and applied to a trip regardless of whether there is an existing or foreseeable event.
Is there a catch?
If it sounds too good to be true, it’s worth noting that there are several limitations. The CFAR upgrade has to be purchased within 7 to 21 days of making the initial trip deposit (this varies by provider so make sure to know when the exact cutoff is). Thus, if you now want to add CFAR coverage to a trip booked months ago, you are out of luck.
Whatever you choose as your base travel insurance policy will include with it a range of covered reasons for which your trip can be canceled or delayed and that would cover up to 100 percent of the nonrefundable trip costs. Nonrefundable trip costs are any costs whereby the traveler isn’t getting a refund directly from the supplier, such as the airline or hotel. So, for example, standard trip cancellation coverage includes things like unexpected illness or injury and canceled or delayed flights.
If you opt for the CFAR upgrade, you won’t be getting a full refund of your trip costs. This is a way to get some of the money you paid for your trip back. There are typically two tiers of coverage: a slightly lower-priced tier that will reimburse travelers for 50 percent of their nonrefundable trip costs and a higher-priced tier that will reimburse travelers for 75 percent of their nonrefundable trip costs.
The trip also has to be canceled no later than 48 hours prior to departure—so no waking up the day of departure and simply deciding you don’t want to go (if you wake up and break your arm while rushing to get ready or have a family emergency, those things would likely be covered by your base plan).
How much does CFAR coverage cost?
CFAR coverage typically costs between 5 and 10 percent of the total trip cost—and to get CFAR coverage you must apply it to the total cost of the trip.
To get a sense of what that means in dollars and cents, Megan Moncrief, chief marketing officer for online travel insurance marketplace Squaremouth.com, said that so far this year, the average cost for a policy with CFAR coverage was $489, and the average cost of all policies purchased through Squaremouth was $291. Those numbers are in line with the figures that Daniel Durazo, director of communications at Allianz Travel Insurance, provided. He said that travel insurance plans that include CFAR coverage are typically about 50 percent more expensive than those without them.
The price of the CFAR coverage is determined by two factors: the total cost of the trip and the age of the travelers. The higher the trip cost and the older the travelers, the more expensive the CFAR coverage is likely to be.
How do I buy it?
As mentioned above, CFAR coverage is sold as an optional upgrade to a standard travel insurance plan. What this means is that first, you need to purchase a travel insurance plan and then you add CFAR coverage to it. There are many ways to buy travel insurance. There are travel insurance search and booking sites, including Squaremouth and TravelInsurance.com, as well as individual travel insurance providers, such as Allianz and AAA.
You can also often tack on travel insurance to the purchase of your flights when booking directly with an airline. And if you are working with a travel advisor, that person can book travel insurance for you as well.
How difficult is it to get reimbursed?
Submitting a travel insurance claim is an easy, straightforward process, regardless of the type of claim, according to Sandberg. You can start a claim by calling your travel insurance provider, or you can do so by creating an account online through a claims portal on the provider’s website. You will then need to fill out any required forms and submit whatever supporting documentation is needed—typically proof of payment for the trip costs, such as receipts or credit card statements, or the bills for covered medical expenses. Once the claim is submitted with all of the required documentation, it can take as little as a week to receive a reimbursem*nt check, Sandberg assured us.
High-risk destinations might not be covered
Before committing to any kind of travel insurance coverage, whether it’s a base plan or a plan that includes the CFAR upgrade, it’s always a good idea to call the insurance provider (or your travel advisor) to make sure that everything you think is covered will actually be covered for your exact trip to the destination you are going.
As a general rule, noted Sandberg, if a governmental agency has recommended against travel to a particular country or region, that country or region is likely not going to be covered by travel insurance. On TravelInsurance.com, those restrictions are baked into the search so that customers can’t actually search and buy travel insurance for destinations that aren’t covered. So pick up the phone and ask all the questions so that you know exactly what you are investing in and what you can expect in return.
This article originally appeared online in February 2020; it was updated on June 12, 2020, to include current information.
>> Next: A Practical Guide to Buying Travel Insurance
Michelle Baran
Michelle Baran is a deputy editor at AFAR where she oversees breaking news, travel intel, airline, cruise, and consumer travel news. Baran joined AFAR in August 2018 after an 11-year run as a senior editor and reporter at leading travel industry newspaper Travel Weekly.
