For the past three year, I have been using a large Swiss insurer for my trip cancellation/assistance, liability and household contents insurance. As I travel quite often, I had to use my trip cancellation insurance a couple of times.
A few weeks ago, I had to use it again. Today, the insurance company reached out to me and said they would like to increase the premiums (and increase the deductible) for the trip cancellation insurance effective immediately, or I can cancel the insurance, as they believe my claims are quite high.
Is this even legal? Are they allowed just raise premiums/deductible without a notice period? I am quite shocked. Any tips would be welcomed. Thanks !
Yes it is legal and since you are a "frequent flyer" so to speak when it comes to making claims you are bad risk and that will always be reflected in the premiums you pay. Furthermore if you continue make claims you'll probably find they won't even want to do business with you.
Thank you everyone for the quick responses! Very strange for someone coming from Canada, as insurers typically are only allowed to increase premiums at certain points (e.g., end of year).
It's actually even worse - many insurers here will cancel your insurance if you claim too often. For some, "too often" may be once a year.
It's common to pay for insurance AND pay for minor damages yourself, so that you don't claim.
e.g. I have a stonechip on my car windscreen. I will goto Germany and get it replaced there for 200euro or so, as this is the third of fourth time I have a stone chip in 2 years (I do a lot of offroading). If I were to claim 4x on the stone chips, I'm pretty sure the insurance would refuse to have me as a client.
Indeed especially with the cheaper insurances this is common. The idea is to use the insurance for the huge things, the small ones you just do yourself. Which was counterintuitive to me but I have learned
Flight delays you should be compensated by the airline after 4 hours, I wouldn't even think of claiming that from travel insurance. Insurance is for big losses, cancellation of trip due illness, illness abroad etc - I've claimed on travel insurance once in my life, for stolen skis on a ski holiday.
High humber of claims, higher risk = higher premiums, makes absolute sense.
For delays and cancellations, they should probably have gone to the operator, not this insurance (most likely). So to an extent you have shot yourself in the foot there.
As with any incident, you have to ensure your claimimg in the right place, and if it's your insurance you have to work out if the overall cost of making that claim is worth it,
I am with you on this one, however, the one time I tried to be compensated by the operator for expenses incurred due to lost luggage, they dragged it for 5 months... Not all operators are reimbursing you for stuff they are supposed to reimburse... And I am not talking about any random airline, it was Edelweiss...