Travel insurance is underwritten more strictly than other personal products because the loss exposure is concentrated and the insured self-selects (people buy more coverage when they sense more risk).
- Age bands: premium and pre-existing condition treatment scale steeply with age. Travellers over 60 typically pay multiples of the under-60 rate; those over 80 may be uninsurable through some channels.
- Medical questionnaire: older or higher-risk travellers must complete a detailed health questionnaire. The questionnaire's answers establish what conditions are considered for stability clauses and what conditions are flat-excluded. An inaccurate answer is material misrepresentation and voids the contract.
- Residency: coverage is conditional on the insured being a resident of the issuing province and covered by its provincial health plan throughout the trip.
- Duration limits: single-trip policies have explicit duration limits; multi-trip annual policies have per-trip duration caps (often 4–60 days). A traveller staying longer than the policy's per-trip cap is uninsured for the excess days.
The broker's duty is to walk the client through the medical questionnaire question by question, not hand it to the client to complete unaided. The broker has no incentive to misrepresent the client's health (the broker is liable in negligence if the inaccurate answer was the broker's), but inexperienced brokers sometimes treat the questionnaire as a paperwork formality.
Common mistake: a client signing the medical questionnaire without reading it carefully. The signature constitutes a binding representation; the client cannot say later "I didn't realize that question was asking about that condition".
⚠️ Trap: A multi-trip annual policy with a 17-day-per-trip cap does not cover day 18 of a 25-day trip. The traveller is uninsured for the entire remaining duration of that trip, there is no partial day-by-day cover-down.
Recall: Why must the broker walk the client through the medical questionnaire? What happens to coverage if a multi-trip annual policy's per-trip cap is exceeded?