Here’s what you should know about the pitfalls of buying travel insurance

Don’t let insurers make you think it’s necessary to read their 20,000-word terms and conditions. It’s not, writes James Daley

The only way to improve customer understanding of insurance is to slow things down (PA)

At some stage over the weekend, the most-read story on the BBC website was about a young man who’d been involved in a motorbike accident on holiday and had his travel insurance claim rejected.

He’d bought the insurance through his bank Lloyds, presumably as part of one of their fee-paying bank accounts. The reason his claim was turned down was that the policy states it won’t cover people for trips of more than 31 days. And this young man had already been away for longer than that.

The victim – who was very badly injured and lucky to be alive – had accrued significant medical costs. However, he was lucky enough to have a proactive family who set up a fundraising page to cover these expenses – which, when I checked it on Saturday morning, had already blasted through its target of £20,000.