Would you pay more for travel insurance to avoid being slapped with a £20,000 bill?

Holidaymakers often buy the cheapest travel insurance available, spat out by a comparison website – but this can sometimes mean you’re not getting vital protection when you need it most.

Now a new travel insurance comparison website called Albert & Eddie has launched, which ranks policies based on what you need, rather than the lowest price.

The website could be particularly useful for people with pre-existing medical conditions, as it aims to help them find specialized insurance deals quickly.

Albert & Eddie tries to solve a common problem with travel insurance: consumers buy something cheap that doesn’t quite meet their needs.

With the rise of price comparison websites, Britons tend to buy insurance based on price, and travel insurance is no exception.

Cheap policies are cheap for a reason – they usually don’t cover as much as more expensive ones.

That’s not a problem, provided the cheap deal does everything a traveler needs.

But when a policy doesn’t provide adequate cover, the consequences can be catastrophic and travelers could end up paying tens of thousands of pounds in medical bills.

While all insurance contracts clearly state what is covered in the fine print, it’s easy for customers to misunderstand or ignore this.

Another common problem is for travelers with pre-existing medical conditions, who struggle to get coverage from existing price comparison websites.

Currently, people in this group have three options with travel insurance.

They can go abroad without cover, they can try to get protection through price comparison websites or they can spend time contacting specialist insurers individually.

Aiming to solve this problem, Albert & Eddie is a new price comparison website backed by travel insurance giant Tifgroup.

The name is a nod to physicist Albert Einstein and inventor Thomas Edison, whose inventiveness inspired the Albert & Eddie team.

How is Albert & Eddie performing?

We crunched the travel insurance numbers from the new site and from the top four price comparison websites to see how premiums — and coverage — stack up.

We looked into a one-way travel insurance policy for a week-long trip to France for a traveler with severe asthma.

Cover with Albert & Eddie for one person for a week starts from £11.12, from the insurer Alpha 175.

This price is right in the middle of the pack of competitive quotes from the mainstream price comparison websites.

The cheapest policy elsewhere for this traveler was from Confused.com and GoCompare, both of which offer £6.30 cover with Post Office Insurance.

On CompareTheMarket it was £9.72 from insurer Virgin Money and on MoneySupermarket premiums start at £11.64 from Admiral.

Albert & Eddie is as user-friendly as any mainstream price comparison site, but it takes a little longer to answer all the questions in the medical screening section – which is a good thing.

You must also fill in each of the medications you take for medical conditions.

Amber Moon, brand manager for Albert & Eddie, said: ‘Because it’s relatively quick and easy, travelers are used to using price comparison websites to purchase travel insurance.

“This has led to an overemphasis on the cost of the policy rather than the cover it provides.”

Getting the wrong cover could mean £20,000 bills

Travelers who need to claim on their travel insurance but don’t have the right coverage can end up with sky-high bills.

Tifgroup shared some of the worst travel insurance horror stories they’ve seen.

In one case, a 28-year-old man faced a £20,000 medical bill after suffering serious injuries, including a fractured skull, following a motorcycle accident in Thailand.

Although he had worldwide travel insurance, the policy did not pay any medical expenses as he had not been in the UK for more than 31 days.

Another man, from Scotland, is left with a £20,000 hospital bill after suffering a heart attack while on holiday in Tenerife – despite having travel insurance.

However, because he had forgotten to mention on his insurance form that he had asthma, the company refused to cover his costs.

Ticking the boxes: The new site offers a choice of two medical screening tools, custom and standard

Albert & Eddie is also helpful for those with pre-existing medical conditions as it is the only price comparison website that uses two medical screening tools instead of the default.

In practice, this means that consumers with medical conditions can find suitable cover more quickly.

There are two main screeners that travel insurance providers use in the market – Protectif and Verisk – and they both work in different ways.

Protectif monitors which medicines customers use. It prompts them to reveal all their health issues that they might otherwise forget, meaning no surprises at a later date.

Verisk looks at the medical conditions themselves and assesses risks in a different way.

As a result, they both can result in vastly different quotes depending on the type of medical condition the client is declaring.

Tony Brown, director of underwriting at Tifgroup, said: ‘The price comparison sites only work with one of them, Verisk.

“This can discourage or disappoint the customer if they can’t find affordable coverage on the price comparison sites and can even deter people from traveling if they can’t get affordable coverage or no coverage at all.”

“Until now, the only alternative for people with complex medical conditions has been to spend time researching all specialist providers individually to get coverage for their travel.

“This can be a challenging and time-consuming job that can take many hours.”

When asked how thorough medical screening checks are on price comparison websites, consumer champion Martyn James said, “Basic overall. Comparison sites work because they quickly guide you through the process of getting quotes.

“The faster it takes, the more likely you are to stick with the process. But only when you click through to the website to the insurer do these questions often arise. And even then I don’t think the exclusions or consequences are anywhere near clear enough.’

What the price comparison websites say

Matthew Harwood, lifestyle insurance expert at Confused.com, said: ‘At Confused.com, our goal is to help as many customers as possible, including those with pre-existing conditions.

‘For this we work together with a wide range of travel insurance providers. And this means we can offer guaranteed quotes online to over 90 per cent of customers with pre-existing medical conditions, meaning that those who apply are likely to find a policy that suits them, while also comparing prices.”

A Compare the Market spokesman said: ‘During the process required to receive travel insurance quotes, all our customers are asked if anyone in the tour party has a pre-existing medical condition or is on the waiting list for treatment(s) or undergo a medical examination.

“Those who say yes will be asked follow-up questions about their condition(s). This allows the providers in our panel to return the most appropriate results.

‘It then shows a range of results and allows the customer to adjust filters to select a policy that meets their needs.’

MoneySupermarket and GoCompare have been contacted for comment.