She fought it, won the claim on the second appeal, and then spent six months telling everyone she knew about the small print. This article is partly her fault and partly the fault of the insurance industry's habit of writing policies designed to be sold, not paid out on.

Six clauses are responsible for the majority of denied claims. Knowing them changes the conversation when you're buying a policy and, more usefully, changes the way you behave abroad.

1. Failure to declare pre-existing conditions

By a long margin the most common reason claims fail. Insurers ask broad questions ("have you had any medical investigation or hospital admission in the last five years?") and apply broad interpretations to the answers. The friend above had ticked "no" to the pre-existing question because her knee was fixed and not currently giving her trouble. The insurer interpreted "had any investigation" to include the original knee scan.

What to do: when in doubt, declare. The premium goes up by £20–£40 in most cases. The peace of mind is worth it. Specifically, declare anything in the last five years that involved:

The Association of British Insurers' published statistics suggest about 60 percent of denied medical claims come back to this category. The vast majority are not deliberate non-disclosure; they're misunderstood questions.

2. FCDO and State Department travel advice

Most policies have a clause that voids cover (or part of cover) if you travel against UK FCDO or US State Department advice. The wording matters – "against all travel" is the strictest tier, "against all but essential travel" is the more common cut-off.

The trap: the FCDO can upgrade advice between booking and travelling. If you booked Mali in March when there was no advisory and travelled in June after FCDO upgraded the advice, most policies void from the day of the upgrade. You won't know until you try to claim.

What to do: check the policy schedule, not the brochure. Look for the words "FCDO" or "FCO" or "advice against" in the exclusions. Then subscribe to FCDO email alerts for any country on your itinerary so you know within hours if anything changes. We've written a longer explanation in How to read UK FCDO and US State Department travel advisories.

If FCDO upgrades advice while you're already in-country, most policies cover you for an emergency return home but not for the rest of the trip. That's usually written as a "curtailment" clause – worth reading separately.

3. Alcohol – and how loose the definition is

Almost every policy excludes claims where alcohol is "a contributing factor". The contentious word is "contributing". Most policies don't require intoxication; they require "a contributing factor", which insurers interpret broadly.

The classic test case: you trip on uneven pavement after dinner and break your ankle. You had two glasses of wine with the meal. The insurer's loss adjuster talks to the restaurant. The claim is declined.

Whether this stands up in court is a different question. The Financial Ombudsman Service has overturned several of these decisions on appeal, on the principle that the alcohol must be a meaningful cause, not a coincident fact. But the appeal process takes months and is exhausting.

What to do: if you have had alcohol and need medical care abroad, get medical care. Don't lie about it on the form, don't add anything beyond what the doctor asks. Many doctors abroad don't routinely test blood alcohol for non-injury cases. If asked directly, answer honestly. The honest answer ("two glasses of wine four hours ago") is rarely a successful basis for denial – the dishonest answer is.

4. Valuables "left unattended"

The classic London airport claim: phone stolen from a bag while you slept on a bench. The policy says valuables must not be left unattended. The insurer says you were asleep, so you were not attending them. Claim denied.

Most policies define "unattended" as "out of arm's reach" or "where you cannot see them". Sleeping next to a bag is unattended. Leaving a bag with a stranger to go to the toilet is unattended. Leaving a bag in a hotel room safe is attended (the policy treats locked safes as a substitute for personal attendance).

What to do: if you wouldn't trust the person next to the bag to grab a coffee for you, don't trust them to attend your valuables. On the practical side, the policies that explicitly cover "unattended valuables in a locked vehicle" or "unattended in a hostel locker" cost slightly more but cover the real-world scenarios most travellers encounter.

This category overlaps with Pickpocketing hotspots in Europe 2026 – the same precautions reduce both the chance of theft and the chance of a successful claim being declined for "unattended".

5. Sports, activities, and the small-print exclusion list

Standard policies cover walking, sightseeing, beach swimming. They do not cover, by default, most of the activities people actually do on holiday: cycling, hiking above 2,500m altitude, scuba diving below 18m, motorcycling, skiing off-piste, paragliding, surfing in waves above a certain height, anything described as "extreme", anything involving "personal mechanised transport not used for routine transport".

The mopeds in Bali are a recurring problem. Standard policies almost universally exclude moped accidents unless you have a UK motorcycle licence. UK driving licences alone are not enough. About 30 percent of UK travel medical claims from Southeast Asia involve mopeds; about 90 percent of those claims are denied for licence-related reasons.

What to do: look at the policy's activity list. If anything you might plausibly do isn't on it, either get an upgraded policy or don't do that thing. Adventure activity packs cost £20–£50 extra and are worth it for almost any trip involving water, height, or motorised vehicles.

A separate trap: the policy that says "covers all standard recreational activities" but defines them by reference to the British Mountaineering Council's grading system. Reading these clauses takes ten minutes. Saving the ten minutes is the false economy.

6. Documentation – the police report rule

Almost every policy requires a police report for theft claims. Filed locally, within 24 hours, with a reference number. If you don't have one, the claim doesn't get processed.

The traps:

What to do: when something is stolen, file the report that day, before anything else. In a serious incident this is the third thing on the list after personal safety and replacing the most urgent missing item. We covered the process for one specific case in Lost or Stolen Passport Abroad.

Insist on a written copy of the report with a reference number. If language is a barrier, the embassy can usually provide a translator, or in Mediterranean tourist cities the tourist-police office will have someone English-speaking.

What to look for in a policy

The cheap policies that catch people out share a profile: low premium, low excess on cancellation, narrow medical cover, no FCDO upgrade cover, no activity pack, no gadget cover. The Money Saving Expert "best buy" lists are a reasonable starting point but they optimise for premium, not for the specific things this article describes.

For most travellers, the right combination is:

Expect to pay £40–£80 for a week's policy that meets these. Anything under £20 is almost certainly cutting one of the corners above.

What to do if a claim is wrongly denied

Don't accept the first letter. Travel insurance complaints upheld by the Financial Ombudsman Service run at roughly 35 percent – the appeal works more often than people expect.

Internal complaint to the insurer first, in writing, citing the specific policy clause you disagree with. Eight weeks pass. Then escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The Ombudsman is free, the process is by post or email, and they decide on the balance of evidence rather than the letter of the policy.

The two strongest grounds for overturning are:

Both are common in declined claims. Both are worth raising.

See also