Webinar Transcript: International Travel Insurance

From Heart Attacks to Terrorism

Julie Masiello: Hello, everyone and welcome. I'm Julie Masiello. I'm the vice president of marketing at RoamRight and I will be your moderator for today. RoamRight is really excited to partner with FTA for this first in a series of live webinars. Look for additional webinars in November and January. And also, please stop by and visit our booth at the FTA conference in Atlanta in February. The subject for our webinar today is things you should consider when planning an International Faith-Based Trip. First, a few administrative items. If you have any questions during the presentation, just type your question into the tap box which you'll see on your screen and send it over to us. We'll try to answer all of the questions at the end of the presentation. However, if we can't get to your question today, we'll e-mail you the answer directly within the next week. We'll also be Tweeting during the webinar. So if you're on Twitter, go ahead and follow us at #RoamRightFTA and you can submit any questions that way as well. We'll have a few interactive polls during the webinar. You'll see on your screen how to submit your vote and we really look forward to your feedback on those.

Our presenter today is Scott Walton. Scott is the regional sales manager for RoamRight. He has more than a decade of experience in the travel insurance and assistance industry, including helping clients through medical security and travel emergencies. He's worked with a variety of organizations from Fortune 500 corporations to colleges and universities, to individual travel agencies. So he's a wealth of information about travel-related considerations that we're going to talk about today. So now I will hand it over to Scott.

 

Scott Walton: Thank you, Julie. I appreciate that introduction. Welcome to everyone in the audience. Hopefully we can get my picture off the screen here soon so that you don't have to stare at my ugly mug too long. As Julie mentioned, we're going to talk about some of the travel concerns that your travelers may face particularly while they're traveling internationally. And we'll talk about those in a minute. But what I'd like to do first is just introduce you to Arch Insurance and to RoamRight.

Arch is a worldwide insurance company with over 40 years of industry experience. Arch is also the parent company of RoamRight Travel Insurance. As you'll see, Arch is extremely involved with USTIA. In fact, our senior vice-president of travel serves on their board. Arch is very unique in the industry in that we hold both A+ rating with the AM Best and Better Business Bureau. So, we're an extremely financially sound company.

For over a decade, Arch has been underwriting other travel insurance providers in the industry. Several years ago, they decided that they wanted to take that experience and introduced to the market a fully integrated solution under the RoamRight brand. What I mean by fully integrated is that customer service, underwriting, and claims are all provided in-house, and we feel that this set-up really allows us to be very responsive to our clients. There is, oftentimes when our customer service department will receive a call, and maybe a question comes up about claims and they can simply look over to the next aisle and get somebody from claims to help them with the conversation if need be. So it really allows us to be very responsive to our clients. With all the regulations in the industry, it's important to note that RoamRight is licensed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

So, who do we work with? You can see here, I'm not going to read down the entire list, but some of that might be pertinent to this audience. We work with a lot of clubs and organizations, colleges and universities, mission groups, NGOs and nonprofits, tour operators and travel agents. That's more on the B2B side and then we also have division that works directly with consumers on B2C side. As we mentioned before, there are several concerns that travelers need to prepare for when they're traveling internationally. That can range from a safety, security or terrorism event. I’d just like to share with you a couple of events that have happened since the beginning of this month. There was a curfew imposed in Turkey because of terrorist threats. Unfortunately, several tourists were injured and killed in Egypt recently. There have been anti-government protest rallies in Armenia. There was a terror threat warning issued in South Africa. And several pro-immigration rallies are planned in multiple European countries. So that gives you a good flavor of the type of situations that can spring up at any time and really what your travelers need to be prepared for.

You also have concerns when it comes to health, illness and injury. Some of the big things you need to look at is, can your traveler receive adequate care in their location? If they're in a location, what hospital should they go to? How will they pay for the care? And we're going to look at all these issues a little more later on. And then, natural disasters can really happen at any time in any place. This month alone, there have been major sandstorms in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Egypt. There's been Hurricane Linda in Mexico. There have been severe storms and flooding in southern France and northern Italy. There was a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in western Mexico. And just recently this week, there was a volcano eruption in western Mexico. I use these examples not to the scare anyone or to get people not to travel, but because it's just part of our life. Everybody's going to travel and we have to travel. It's just you have to be aware that these situations are out there and prepare accordingly to protect yourselves really and the traveler.

So we're going to do a quick survey here. I'll read it. Everybody can see it but I'll still read it. "In 2014, what percentage of US travelers visiting overseas did not have travel insurance? Is it A. 53%? B. 44%? C. 87%? Or D. 72%?" We're going to give everybody a few minutes to consider your answer. And I see that Julie has her answers broken out and is currently tallying up the results.

 

Julie: I wish I could take responsibility for figuring that out. But as you can see, it's very easy to vote. Just go ahead and click on the radio button next to the answer that you think is appropriate and hit "Submit." We are always amazed at the answers to some of these questions. Particularly, when you think about the kind of world that we live in today and the sorts of risks that are out there.

 

Scott: I think everyone's tallies are in and it looks like the winner was C. 87% at 42.9%. Second was 72% at 35.7%. B was third at 21.4% or 44% of the answer. And A. 53% garnered zero votes. And the winner is 72%. According to the US Department of Commerce, National Travel and Tourism, 72% of US travelers going overseas did not have travel insurance. And what I'm hoping by the end of this presentation is you're going to see the importance of why that number needs to be much lower.

So some of the things that we're going to look at is helping travelers understand the importance of travel insurance. One of the first items is, can your traveler afford to lose their travel investment? Nobody books a trip expecting to cancel it. However, it happens all the time. Somebody becomes ill, or maybe there's a security, or a natural disaster event that happens prior to their travel. Can that traveler really afford to lose the investment that they made? And that investment could be $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 or much more. Now, I can tell you that trip cancellation is the number one claim at RoamRight at about 68%. And sickness, injury, and death make up about 80% of those claims. So you can see, again, the importance of having trip cancellation coverage.

 

Julie: And I think a lot of people automatically think that international travel is the most important time to buy travel insurance. But particularly when you think about mission trips to help rebuild in different states, even in the United States. And a lot of faith based groups in particular are doing fundraising to be able to go there. If somebody gets sick and they can't go on the trip, that's a lot of wasted effort if they can't get their money back.

 

Scott: Yes. That's a great point. The next thing is, do you have medical insurance that will travel with you? There is a major misconception among a lot of travelers, that they can walk into a foreign provider, show their domestic insurance card and receive treatment. Really, this is in most cases not reality. Many domestic insurance plans don't cover international travel or international care. And if they do, a lot of hospitals aren't going to recognize that card. People also believe that Medicare can be used outside the US, and it's not true.

The other important thing to consider is many hospitals will ask for thousands of dollars upfront before delivering treatment or discharging a patient. We even see that some hospitals will seize a traveler's passport, not releasing it until payment is made. If your traveler doesn't have travel insurance that's going to take care of that, what's the next option? It's for them to come out with a large sum of cash or a credit card to pay for that care. I've seen a lot throughout the years of families financially being wiped out or organizations being wiped out because they have to come up with $5,000, $10,000 for treatment or they have to max out their credit card. I ask you to think about your own situation. If you were traveling today and you didn't have travel insurance to help offset those costs, what would it do to you financially?

 

Julie: I think, too, a lot of times people look at it and say, "Well, I'm pretty healthy. I'm not likely to have a heart attack when I go overseas." But there are so many instances that we cover where somebody is hiking and trips and falls, and can't hike back down. How do you get them off the mountain? Or the proverbial hit by a bus, actually does happen when people are away from home. Just like those things happening when you're at home. So it's really important to make sure that medical coverage is in place and that it's sufficient to cover.

 

Scott: Yes. And we knew that mission trips are often scheduled to places that are more underdeveloped when it comes to medical care. I mean, that's why people go on mission trips, to help those people. You have to figure that a lot of cases when that happens, somebody's going to need to be evacuated. We're going to talk about Haiti in a minute. That's a perfect example where they're not going to be able to receive the level of care they need and they're going to be evacuated. Evacuations can run from $25,000, $50,000, more than $100,000. Again, is that traveler prepared to pay that cost? In most cases, I would think not.

The other thing I want to talk about is, what would you do in an emergency? If a traveler experiences a medical emergency while traveling internationally, do they have somebody to call? I was at a trade show recently and asked a travel agent. I said, "Do your travelers have somebody to call in an emergency?" And he said, "They call me." Well, I didn't at that time tell him that that probably was not the ideal case. But it really isn't. A travel agent or tour operator, in most cases, is not prepared to help somebody. They don't have the resources or the know-how in the country where somebody's traveling. Most insurance companies have 24/7 emergency assistance. Make sure your travelers know how to find it quickly if they need it. When a traveler needs help, understand the types of travel problems. Going back to the earlier slide, research and understand the types of risk your travelers may face at their destination and recommend measures to help them mitigate those risks. We'll look at a few scenarios later on. Also, know the type of travel insurance coverage that's available and the type of coverage that your traveler needs. Let's say they just started a new job. They booked a trip a while ago or they want to book a trip but they just started a new job. Do they need cancel for work reason coverage? Because there's a good chance maybe they'll have to cancel their trip. Again, if their domestic insurance doesn't travel internationally, make sure they have the right medical limits for the destination where they're traveling. Again, talking about the evacuation, make sure that they have a good level of evacuation coverage. And then, if they're going to higher risk area, you may want to look and make sure that they have security or natural disaster evacuation coverage as well.

One of the most common reasons that a claim is denied is because travelers don't understand sometimes what the policy covers. So make sure that if you or a traveler has any questions, to call the customer service department and get those items straightened out. Also know what resources are available to your clients to help them prepare for their trip, what tools are available? Make sure your travelers are educated before they depart. It's probably one of the best ways to protect them. So make sure that they have a way to find immunization, recommendations, or requirements, country-specific entry requirements, real-time security information, travel alerts, health planning tools. RoamRight clients get access to a free mobile app where they can research this country-specific information. We'll look at this in more detail in a few minutes. Travelers can also get information by visiting travel.state.gov. If they signed up for the STEP program, the smart traveler enrollment program, they'll receive travel alerts and warnings as well. Know who to call, we touched earlier. Most travel insurance products are going to have 24/7 emergency assistance. Make sure that they know who to call and use that if they're in any type of situation.

So let's look at a few real life situations. A heart attack in Haiti, terrorism in Israel, and an earthquake in Nepal. Haiti is one of the leading destinations for volunteer work and that's for good reason. Haiti is probably the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with about 80% of the population living below the international poverty line of $2 a day. Adequate medical care is nearly impossible if not impossible to receive in Haiti. Hospitals are going to lack basic supplies and equipment. Pharmaceutical supplies are often in short supply. And the hygiene standards are very poor. Haiti also faces a severe shortage of medical practitioners. Again, another reason why it's a common destination for mission trips. It's estimated that there are roughly 25 physicians and 11 nurses per one 100,000 people. In comparison in the United States, there's approximately 250 physicians per 100,000 people. So you can see, again, why does the lack of adequate care is going to be pretty much impossible to receive in Haiti.

If somebody is injured or ill in Haiti, probably regardless of the level of it, most likely they're going to have to be evacuated to Florida. And just to reinforce that, in 2015, in August of this year, the Department of State issued a travel warning informing US citizens traveling to Haiti about the lack of adequate emergency medical facilities, and in that warning they also recommended that travelers obtain evacuation coverage or evacuation insurance.

What would you do if you had a traveler and they had a heart attack in Haiti? We've talked a little about some of this earlier. I'm going to talk about resources in a minute, but just some of the things that you want to consider when somebody needs to be hospitalized internationally. We recognize that Haiti offers a poor level of care, but some question that you want to ask in other locations. Can they be treated locally? Does the hospital have the latest diagnostic equipment? Is the medical team using modern techniques or practicing medicine as if it was 20 years ago? Where were the physicians trained? If they can be treated locally, who's going to monitor their care? Who's going to pay for that hospital payment if the hospital's asking for money upfront? If they cannot receive adequate care in their location, are they going to need to be evacuated to a higher level of care? If so, who's going to coordinate that? Who's going to arrange for the transportation? Who's going to know what medical staff they need on the air ambulance? Can the traveler speak with the treating physician or the nurses? That's a big problem overseas and you need to have a resource available that can interpret for that patient to make sure that they understand their treatment plan. Is the traveler traveling alone? Do they need to have somebody brought to their bedside or do they have dependents that are traveling with them? If they do, does that dependent need some place to stay? Do they need to be brought home? If so, by what means? Do they need an escort?

There's a lot of things that you need to contemplate when somebody is hospitalized or injured, or sick oversees. And that's where 24/7 Emergency Assistance really comes in handy. Just talking about the network that we have available. In our network we have about 4,500 medical providers globally. Our assistance provider is ONCALL International. And those 4,500 medical providers consist of hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, air ambulance, ground ambulances, medical escorts. So again, you're going to see that their footprint is quite vast in 200 plus countries and democratic republics. They also have a lot of experience in managing cases. They do about 43,000 cases each year. These locations where your travelers are going to, they're going to have the resources and they're most likely going to have managed cases in those locations. So they're going to have protocols already in place.

Also, how does travel insurance help? We touched on this. I'll just go through this quickly. But you know, if somebody's sick in a foreign country and they need to go see a doctor, they're probably not going to know who to go to. So we're going to be able to provide medical referrals to credential providers. If they need to be evacuated to a higher level of care, we're going to coordinate all those services for them. And if it turns out that it is medically necessary and they have the insurance, we're going to pay the cost for those evacuations. Repatriation home - that can be after treatment. Let's say they're treated internationally and it's determined that they need to go back to their home country for care, we're going to coordinate that. Or unfortunately if somebody happens to pass away overseas and we have to repatriate their body home.

We can provide translation services to make sure that the patient understands the treatment plan and could communicate with the doctors and nurses. We're going to issue that payment guarantee or arranged payment to foreign providers so care is not held up. If the hospital is asking for that money upfront, you don't want to be scrambling to come up with it and delay their care. It's also going to include trip interruption benefits for unused prepaid travel expenses. And again, it's going to pay for the cost of the treatment and the evacuation if it's mandatory or necessary.

 

Julie: And I think that the trip interruption piece of it is not be overlooked. A lot of these types of programs are prepaid because you're going as a group. If somebody has to come back, if you don't have the benefit for (a) getting your money back that you've prepaid you're not going to be using and (b) the additional flight to get home that you weren't planning on buying with less than a day's notice. It can end up being a very expensive proposition.

 

Scott: Indeed. So let's look at how phone call actually assisted a client in this situation. ONCALL was notified that a traveler suffered a heart attack in Haiti. Upon receiving the call, their in-health medical team immediately consulted with the local doctor and not surprisingly concluded that the traveler needed to be air-evacuated to Miami. Using their network of credentialed and accredited providers, they arranged for the in-flight medical team and also for the air ambulance. And what was interesting about this case is the traveler was on a small island. So before they could even get that patient to the air ambulance, they needed to arrange for helicopter to transport that patient to the destination where they could get on the air ambulance. While all this is going on, ONCALL is gathering all the documentation that's needed for the transport, as well as arranging for the hospital admission in Florida. The patient was flown to the hospital in Florida where they were treated, released, and recovered. You can see where the insurance and the assistance come together because all in that situation, you're talking about the doctor consulting and then the evacuation to Miami. You can see how they really do coordinate perfectly together.

As we mentioned earlier, all RoamRight travelers can download a free mobile app and this mobile app really can provide them with fantastic information. They can evaluate in-country medical care and health risks. They can research hospitals in the destination. So let's say they have an ongoing illness and they want to know should something happen and they need to seek a hospital, they can do all that before they travel. Again, education before they travel is one of the best ways to protect them. They can research in-country, country-specific immunization information both recommended and required. They can look up in-store emergency contact information. We're used to picking up the phone and dialing 911. It's not going to be like that in a foreign country. They can receive travel alerts before they travel and while they're on the road.

Something that's really neat is we have a mapping system where you can look at their location and send them alerts for any alert within 100 miles of their location. So if something happens and it's not in their geographic area, they probably don't want to know about it. But if it does affect them, again, it's going to recognize where they are and send that alert to them.

One of my favorite tool is it has a translation tool to help the traveler communicate with EMTs, paramedics, doctors and nurses in seven languages. That's English, Spanish in two dialects, French, Italian, German, Chinese, and Japanese. And what's so neat about this tool is let's say you're translating from English into Spanish, it's going to show you "I need a doctor in English" and then under it it's going to have that translation in Spanish and then it also has a button that you can push that will speak that phrase in Spanish. Just a real neat tool. You can also store copies and important travel documents like your passport ID page, driver's license, maybe copies of your immunization or vaccine records, maybe any medications that you're currently taking, contact information, and your travel itinerary. And it really helps in the claims process as well because you can take a picture of your claim. Let's say you had lost baggage and you needed to buy something, you can take a picture of it, upload it into your app and you'll have it with you when you need to file a claim. You can also call for assistance with a push of a button. That's a feature in there as well. For more information on the app, we're certainly always happy to do a demo for you. You can also go to YouTube and type in RoamRight mobile app and we have a video on there that you can watch and it goes through the app in a little more detail. All right. You didn't know you were going to get tested this much today but we're going to have another survey. A traveler had a medical emergency in Europe and had to take an air ambulance home to the US, how much is his flight across the Atlantic Ocean cost? A. $35,000? B. $50,000? C. $70,000? D. $95,000?

 

Julie: You know, I'm sitting here laughing because I'm seeing that the responses are coming in before you're even done reading.

 

Scott: That's good.

 

Julie: So I think people are assuming that this is a very expensive proposition. We see early responders.

 

Scott: We will give you a few minutes here.

 

Julie: Yeah. Okay. I think we have our answers. We've got five people who think the answer is $50,000, four people think it's $95,000 and the rest of them are a lot lower. They're looking at $35,000. The answer is?

 

Scott: The answer is $70,000. The hospital costs were $47,000 and the air ambulance was $70,000. Again, remember this is somebody who got sick in Europe so it wasn't like they were in a very remote location. So the total covered medical expenses for this was $117,000.

 

Julie: And if I remember correctly with this case, this gentleman got sick in France, right? Where you would expect great medical care.

 

Scott: Yeah. So another quiz. How much do you think does medical only travel insurance policy cost?

 

Julie: Now, when I'm looking at these costs, I'm thinking in terms of my own health insurance.

 

Scott: Oh, I know.

 

Julie: Which automatically takes me up to the 107 number, but we'll see.

 

Scott: Still coming in.

 

Julie: Okay.

 

Scott: Right. Well, it looks like the leading answer is $28, which is the right answer. I'm hoping some people in here haven't seen this presentation before. Good job. Yes, so the total cost for the RoamRight travel insurance policy was $28. So just think about that for a minute. You pay $28 which covers $117,000 that would have been out of pocket expenses, most likely.

 

Julie: I'd take that investment...

 

Scott: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're not going to get that there.

 

Julie: No.

 

Scott: All right. So let's go ahead and look at another scenario. Israel. As everyone knows, Israel is one of the most popular religious destinations in the world with roughly 3.5 million tourists annually. 54% of the tourists in Israel are Christian with 39% being Jewish. Israel is an interesting one because you do hear a fair amount of things happening there. The government of Israel and the Palestine Authority do try to make considerable efforts to please major tourist attraction and ensure that the security in the area where foreign visitors travel is protected. But things change there very quickly, pretty much on a day-to-day situation at some times, depending on the political situation, recent events, the geographic area or holiday. For example, just in the past few days there's been a security alert for clashes between the Palestinians and the Israeli police forces in Jerusalem's old city. So again, there was a time where it seems like things were kind of quiet and then it escalated and you have that going on right now.

So what would you do if Tel Aviv was bombed? Like we talked before, in any scenario there's a lot of things that are outside the traveler's control but you really need to consider a few things. First off, does anybody require a medical attention? How close is the event to the traveler? Is it isolated to one area like the example we just saw or is it more widespread? How long did they expect the security event to last? Is it a preplanned event or spontaneous? Does it tie-in to a certain day, a certain holiday? Should the traveler prepare to leave the area or is it better to honker down in place and wait it out? If it is best for them to leave, how are they going to do so? Who's going to schedule that? Who's going to arrange that? Is public transportation available? Are there airports open? Are the roads closed? What is the reason for the event? Is it targeting certain groups or areas? Are there areas you should avoid? Are there any curfews or restrictions that are in place?

Let's look at how travel insurance can help in these different situations. Cancelation coverage is going to help if the traveler is getting ready to leave and there's a terrorist attack so their investment is going to be protected. You also don't want to send anybody into a situation where there is a terrorist attack going on, obviously.

Just like we do with the medical case, it's important to have somebody who's available to help in these situations. Again, we work with all international and for security cases we also work with iJET. IJET has 19,000 sources information in more than 30 languages. They're scouring this information to get the perspective from different groups, different countries, how they're seeing it. They have 50 plus intelligence analysts across five continents who are providing regular updates through these travel alerts that we talked about. They're also going to provide 24/7 global monitoring again so you have accurate real-time information. And they're going to help assist and arrange any ground transportation. That can be everything from a commercial flight, armored vehicle, a private charter, a boat. It really depends on the situation but they're going to be available to coordinate all that for the traveler.

We just talked a little bit about this but again looking at it, having this 24/7 resource, their security team is going to evaluate the situation to make recommendations for next steps. They're going to maintain contact with the traveler and provide real-time security intelligence. Just having somebody for that traveler to speak with to reassure them that everything is going to be okay, to let them know that they have people in-country who are there to help them, lifts a great burden off the traveler.

I remember a case several years ago where somebody called because they were hearing what they thought were gunshot noises outside their hotel. What actually happened to be that there was a celebration going on and it was fireworks. So the traveler hearing that everything is okay and that we have it under control and we know what's going on is extremely important.

We are also, through the insurance, going to coordinate and if need be pay for that person to be evacuated out of country. So all very important things to have. Looking back, who is your traveler going to call in an emergency? I don't have these resources, so if they called me I wouldn't know what to do and I probably would think that most everyone on this phone call would feel the same way about their situation.

So let's look at again a real live example how ONCALL helped in the situation. ONCALL was contacted that there was a political unrest in Israel. Happened to be a young traveler who was traveling and her mother was very concerned so the mother reached out to ONCALL to let them know that her son was there and that she was very worried about him. The young traveler had been currently staying in a bomb shelter for safety. ONCALL and iJET quickly reached out to their security team to get an update on the situation and it was determined that the risk of staying in-country for that young traveler was far too great and that he should be evacuated out of Israel. From there, ONCALL sets the best way to move the traveler quickly and safely to the nearest safe location.

And as we mentioned before, that can be done in a lot of different ways. It could an armored vehicle with security personnel, it can be a chartered private airplane, it can be commercial or even a boat. In this case, fortunately, the commercial airlines were still operating and ONCALL and iJET arranged to have the student taken to the airport where they took a commercial flight to Turkey which was deemed to be the safest haven at that time. The student remained in Turkey until they could arrange to have that person flown back home to their home country and their family. So then you could see how many assistants in the insurance all ties them together.

All right. The last one we're going to look at is Nepal. I'm going to go through this quickly because I want to make sure that everybody has time to ask questions. We talked earlier about that natural disasters can happen at any time in any place. You can see here figures from 2012. There were over 905 worldwide natural disaster events. 45% of those were storm, 7% were geophysical, 36% were floods. I'm sure everybody has heard about the floods that are going on right now here in the US. And 12% were weather related.

Nepal experienced recently a very bad earthquake. A 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal back in April. It had devastating effects. 9,000 people were killed. 23,000 people were injured. Entire villages were flattened. At that time, there were 20,000 foreign nationals visiting Nepal. So you can see a situation like this, basically the infrastructure is going to be destroyed. So something to look at when an event like this happens. Again, is anybody hurt? Do they have some place to stay? Can they get food? Can they get clean water? Do they have clothing and basic necessities? Are the roads open? Is the airport open? Do they expect to see civil unrest? Is looting happening in the near future because just everybody is panicked and needs all those basic necessities if they're available.

So again, how can travel insurance help? We can contact the victims and stay in communication. We can assess and monitor the situation, keeping them updated on the latest events. We can identify and address any medical concerns that they may have and we can arrange for an evacuation out of country if need be. And one thing that's unique about RoamRight's coverage is, our plans include natural disaster evacuation coverage just to give us a little plug where a lot of other countries do not include that in their policies.

So let's look at how ONCALL assisted in this situation. Four travelers had just finished doing assignment for nonprofit organization in Nepal when the earthquake struck and it destroyed the entire surrounding area where they were. After it was confirmed that nobody was hurt, the logistics experts conducted an assessment to determine the traveler's specific geographic coordinates. They also looked at how much food and water the travelers had and what their transportation options were. The team determined that it was best if the travelers stay put and they quickly contacted the security team to advice on the best place to shelter in place until it was safe to travel.

As you can imagine with the area being devastated, it was very difficult to communicate with the group through phone or internet. So ONCALL stayed in close contact with the group via SMS, making sure that everybody had what they needed. ONCALL then worked to find the first available flight to Kathmandu which they determined was the closest staging area with adequate shelter and supplies. ONCALL arranged secured transportation to Kathmandu for the travelers and confirmed their safe arrival. Once they landed in Kathmandu they also arranged to have a commercial flight back home, and during this whole process we're keeping family members and organizations updated on the status of the evacuation as well.

So we've talked a lot about the dire situations when travel insurance is important. It's not just for major emergencies. We talked about the [inaudible] but there are other things you need to consider like lost luggage, delayed trip, and the technology that RoamRight can provide the travelers to help them prepare for their trip. So I want to thank everyone for their time and we're going to take any questions that you may have at this time.

 

Julie: And thank you, Scott. When you look at all that information, it can almost make travel look scary.

 

Scott: Not the intent. I know.

 

Julie: I know but I think that it's actually less scary if you think ahead about these situations and then just make sure that you're covered and that your group is covered. You can have a much more enjoyable trip.

 

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

 

Julie: So if you haven't already please go ahead and connect with Scott on LinkedIn to get updates and tips on operating travel insurance to your travelers. We'd also like to thank our partners at FTA for bringing us together with all of you today to talk about these issues. It looks like we have a few questions coming in. I'm just going to read a couple of them. The rest of them, we will get back to you because we're getting a little bit short on time here. We will be sure to answer everybody's questions via e-mail as well. So the first question that we have is, "Do you offer coverage for groups?"

 

Scott: We do. We actually have two plans available and what's nice about these plans is it's geared for eight or more travelers in the same itinerary and it's also based on trip cost only. There's not a lot of need to provide ages. It's very quick to determine if somebody wants a quo, they just simply need to provide us with the trip cost and the travel dates and we can work it up for them and it's a very quick enrollment process.

 

Julie: Right. And the next one is, "I'm sorry if I missed it but does your medical policy have a pre-existing condition exclusion?" That's really interesting.

 

Scott: Yeah. That's a great question, whoever asked that. Yeah. If the policy is purchased within 21 days of the initial trip deposit, then we do have that waiver and that's also important to keep in mind for any upgrades that the traveler may want to purchase.

 

Julie: Okay. We have another question here. "Is there a difference between war and terrorism? And if so, what?"

 

Scott: That's probably one that I want to get with our claims manager. That's a tricky one to answer but I'm happy to get back to whoever asked that question.

 

Julie: Okay. We have one here, "Can tour operators purchase the insurance for their clients as part of the tour package?"

 

Scott: Sure. Yeah. Again, going back to that group product that makes it very easy and what's nice is we can determine the rate for you and then you can publish that rate to the members of your group so they know exactly how much the insurance is. Just going back to the group products again, the two plans, one is great for domestic travel and then we have another one that is great for international travel. The domestic one has great benefits. The one that's geared perfect for domestic has a little bit better benefit limits, where the one that's a little better for international has higher limits.

 

Julie: Okay. Here's another one. "Do I need to have an international calling plan to use the mobile app?" That's a really interesting question. Many of the features that are built into the mobile app are within the app themselves. So the translation and all that stuff is actually in the app. If you're traveling to a rural area or if you don't want to pay to have an international calling plan put on your phone, there are still a lot of those benefits that you can access on the mobile app. However, if you are in a situation where you don't have an international calling plan but you do have access to WiFi which there are a lot of places. I've been in World China and found WiFi. You can actually make a call on the app to our assistance provider or to a customer service over the WiFi's connection. You really don't need a calling plan, which is pretty cool.

 

Scott: I love a partner that can ask the question and answer it at the same time. It's perfect.

 

Julie: Let me see. Here's another question. "Do I have to be licensed to sell RoamRight?"

 

Scott: Well, that right now really need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. As I mentioned, there's a lot of changes in the industry. So what we'd like to do is if you're interested in selling RoamRight is to contact us and we'll go through that with you, because there's ways that we can set you up through an affiliate program where there's certain regulations that you need to follow versus being an actual seller of the insurance.

 

Julie: Okay. "Will all travelers have the choice to go to their home hospital?" The answer to that is actually the assistance company that we work with will give a recommendation, will work with the doctors to give a recommendation as to whether or not the then patient is stable enough to travel. There are times when that's not recommended and so the insurance company relies on that assistance company looking at the total situation before we decide where the treatment is going to happen. Here's another hospital question. "How do I know if I can trust the hospital where my travelers are?"

 

Scott: That's where having a qualified assistance provider comes in. They worked with these hospitals for many years. They've been vetted. And when you have their in-house medical team speaking with the treating physician or the hospital, they're going to know immediately whether that individual can receive a high level of care. And a real great example is in Mexico. You can have a hospital in Mexico where the care is subpar and around the corner can be a hospital with state of the art diagnostic equipment and trained doctors. You have to be really careful because there's been many times where somebody will ask somebody at the hotel what hospital they should go to. They'll refer to a hospital and that individual may or may not know somebody that works at the hospital so they'll be referring them where they could even be getting some type of kickback for recommending that they go there. So yeah, it's very important to call that assistance line to find out.

 

Julie: I agree. "As a partner, is the insurance booked online? How does that whole booking process work for travel agents or even if there's a group where, say, a safe leader wants to get insurance for their group?"

 

Scott: Yeah, sure. There's a couple of ways that we could set it up. I mentioned earlier that we have an affiliate program where you can put a banner ad or link on your website. The traveler can basically click the banner ad. It will take them to a co-branded portal where they can buy insurance depending on licensing requirements. We can also set up what we call kind of like a backroom office where the tour operator or travel agent can go in and prepare a quote for their individuals. Again, that really depends on licensing requirements so we'd have to look at that on a case-by-case basis. And then for groups, I just did one yesterday where one of our partners fill out simple spreadsheets, send it to our customer service department. They enrolled everybody in the group and it was that simple.

 

Julie: Okay. Here's a good question. We will make this the last one to make sure that people can get back to whatever they need to do at 3 o'clock today. "Is the insurance expensive?"

 

Scott: Well, I think you saw from the $117,000 example for a $28 policy that it's really not expensive for the risk of not having it. We've started to see that more travel agencies and tour operators and groups are starting offering the travel insurance, not mandatory as in the person needs to purchase it but at least we've seen them start to make them initial page thing that the travel insurance was offered to them. Because too many cases come back where something happens to a traveler that doesn't have the insurance and their immediate question to the travel agent or tour operator is, why didn't you offer me travel insurance? Why didn't I know about this? And they're stuck with this huge expense. So offering it is a great safeguard for both the organization and for the traveler.

 

Julie: Okay. Very good. Thank you, Scott.

 

Scott: Thank you, Julie.

 

Julie: And thank you everybody for participating today.

 

Scott: Thank you, everyone.

 

Julie: And we look forward to seeing you at the FTA conference in Atlanta in February and also the next webinar that's going to be held this November. Thank you.

 

Scott: Great. Thank you.

 

[End]

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