Webinar Transcript: Reassure Your Travelers
5 Ways to Reassure Your Travelers in an Uncertain World
Julie: Hello everyone and welcome to the RoamRight Webinar presented in partnership today with the Faith Travel Association. Today's webinar, five ways to reassure your travelers in an uncertain world is the third in our series of Webinar with the FTA. You can view the previous two Webinars at our website at roamright.com/partners/fta.
First I'd like to go over a little bit of house keeping, if you have any questions during the presentation, simply type your question into the chat box and send it on over. We'll try to answer all of the questions at the end of the presentation but if we run into a time crunch and we're not able to get to your question today, we'll be sure to email you and answer directly within the next week. We will be tweeting during our webinar today so if you are on Twitter, you can also follow along at #roamrightfta and you can also submit questions that way, they'll reach us and we'll answer those as well. We'll have a few interactive polls in the webinar and we really look forward to your feedback on those. When we get to that point you'll see on your screen how you'll be able to submit your vote and we will go over the results of the voting at the end of couple of minutes after you enter your information.
Our presenter today is Scott Walton, he's the Regional Sales Manager for RoamRight. Scott 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. Before I hand it over to Scott however, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to meet with him in person next week at the FTA conference. We hope you'll all be attending and if you are, please go ahead and stop by booth F6 to say hello. If you do make it to the FTA, make sure when you stop by the booth to let Scott and Lisa Minton, who is also one of our regional sales managers, know that you were on the webinar today because we'll collect your business card for a special drawing that I'm going to announce at the end of today's webinar. Lisa Minton will also be taking part in a panel discussion with Faith leaders, called "Developing a Successful Travel Program" and she's going to be talking about detailed preparation for a successful trip, so now I would like to hand it over to Scott Walton.
Scott: Great, thank you Julie, welcome everyone. What I'd like to do is start out by telling you a little bit about who we are. If you took part in the two previous webinar you may have seen this information already so I'll try to do it kind of quickly; so who are we? Arch Insurance Services is a worldwide insurance company with over 20 years of industry experience, it's also the parent company of RoamRight Travel Insurance. We are an active member of the U.S. Travel Insurance Association, In fact our senior vice president Linda Fallon currently serves on their board.
We're unique to the industry that we hold an A plus rating with both A.M. Best and the Better Business Bureau. For over a decade Arch had underwritten a number of other travel insurance programs and actually we still do underwrite and administer a few; but several years ago Arch decided that it wanted to take its vast industry experience and enter the market with its own brand which is Roam Right Travel Insurance. Something that makes RoamRight Travel Insurance very unique is the fact that our customer service underwriting and claims are fully integrated and provided in house. And why that's important is because if one of our customer service reps receives a phone call and the person on the line has a claims question, they can easily look to our claims examiners, ask the question or even transfer the call to them. This really allows us to be more responsive to our customer needs.
You may have heard recently that there have being a lot regulatory changes in the market place. So whoever you're working with, make sure that they’re licensed....RoamRight is licensed in all 50 States in the District of Columbia and that allows us to make sure that you’re compliant with travel insurance offerings.
So who do we work with? You can see that RoamRight works with a wide array of clients covering both domestic and international travel. For example, in 2015 our travelers visited more than 206 countries and territories so there really is no place that we haven't had somebody buy our travel insurance and travel to. We offer numerous individual and group plans that are tailored to meet the need of our travelers, so we have plans that provide pre-trip only cover such as trip cancellation and trip interruption. We also have plans that provide post departure benefit like medical security, natural disaster evacuation coverage, or you can get a plan that has both of those offerings that's a little more comprehensive. We've also developed several tools to help our partners - from comprehensive agent portals to abandoned quote emails and as I mentioned several custom plans, and if you're interested in learning more about any of those plans or any of the tools that we have available, you can contact me. At the end of the presentation, my contact information will be on the screen.
So, as a travel insurance provider, we are very in tuned to events throughout the world, events that can make travelers question whether they want to leave home and travel domestically and even internationally. Recently we've seen mass shooting and terrorist attacks in France, Turkey, Jakarta, Copenhagen, Egypt and even the United States. We've seen earthquakes that have measured more than 7.0 on the Richter scale, the most severe being Chile, Nepal and Peru and closer to home we've seen rioting and protests in Baltimore, New York, Chicago…
Julie: Scott, I actually.....just for perspective saw that Baltimore made the top 50 list of most dangerous cities in the world but yet we don't hesitate to enjoy our downtown waterfront and amenities.
Scott: Exactly, so what this points out is, as Julie pointed out, whether you're traveling domestically or internationally, your clients can and may have concerns about where they're going. It's interesting, even with all these events going on, according to the CDC, motor vehicle crashes, not crime or terrorism are the number one killer of healthy U.S. people traveling abroad.
Julie: That's interesting.
Scott: People acknowledge that these events that we just looked at concern them but they don't want to miss out on the opportunity that travel can provide. They don't want to miss out on learning about new cultures, trying new foods, visiting iconic places or in FTA cases a lot of more performing volunteer work or missionary worker overseas. According to a 2015 survey by USTIA, 48% of people surveyed were concerned about traveling in light of world events but the good news is that only 5% of those that were concerned would plan on canceling their trip. The other 95% still want to go on their trip but they may make alternate adjustments, such as changing their travel destination or buying travel insurance to protect them while they're overseas.
Julie: We certainly saw that kind of activity happening right after the Paris incident.
Scott: Yep, indeed. So let's look at a few ways that you can help protect your travelers. Today we're going to walk through five ways you can reassure your travelers in today's uncertain world, five ways that you can help your travelers understand that yes, the world can be unpredictable but it shouldn't stop them from traveling and there are resources in place to assist them while they're traveling. First thing you want to do is acknowledge your client's concerns, most people have some concerns about their safety when traveling as we saw earlier there's been several significant events that can certainly trigger these fears. If your clients are interested in a destination but hesitant to visit, try to identify why they feel that way; for example, they don't want to go to Paris because of the recent Paris attacks. Now these fears are genuine but rest assured while you can't remove the risk all together you can diminish them by making sure your travelers are armed with the right information and tools of one of which is travel insurance. So maybe you do have a traveler that is hesitant to want to go overseas one thing you can look to add to their policy is "cancel for any reason" coverage, that means exactly what it says. If your traveler changes his or her mind about going, they can cancel their trip with no questions asked.
Julie: And I think that that's actually an interesting thing that a lot of travel providers don't often think to offer up, so many times people look at insurance and they think to themselves well, I'm not going to be able to cancel because there will be a loop hole. But "cancel for any reason" coverage is exactly that. You can wake up one day whether there's an incident or not in your destination maybe you just change your mind say "I don't want to go" and you can recoup money back.
Scott: Yep, it's a great safety net for your travelers and the other thing is that trip cancellation coverage also includes coverage for terrorism, so if there is a terrorist event and your travelers....one of the cities where they're going to be traveling to had that incident, they can cancel their trip. Finally, reassure your travelers that with good travel insurance they also have someone to help them in case an emergency and we're going to look on that a little bit later on.
One of the main concerns people have about traveling abroad is language barriers, while this can be problematic when ordering food or asking for directions, a language barrier during an emergency is much more serious. Reassure your client that translation resources are available to support them in case of an emergency; in the case of language barriers these companies are going to have assistance providers. For example, we work with On Call International they have 16 in house languages and immediate access to the majority of world languages and dialects, and this is helpful because let's say they were in an area where the doctors don't speak English. I know the assistance coordinator can provide translation services to make sure that the patient clearly understands what the doctors and nurses that are treating them are saying so there's no misconception about what their treatment entails. With RoamRight we also provide translation services via our mobile app, these translation services are available in seven languages including 150 terms and phrases and are accessible in both written and audio format. So on the mobile app it's really......it's a great feature, let's say you're traveling some place where they speak Spanish...as I mentioned there are several phrases and translations that they will see written in English. It will be translated in Spanish and next to it there's an audio button they can push and it will actually say that term in Spanish for example, "I need a doctor", it's going to have it written and then it's actually going to say it verbally.
Julie: It's not going to say that verbally now?
Scott: I wish I could, unfortunately I can't.
Julie: Alright, well, on that note...
Scott: Perfect.
Julie: Then we're coming up to a quiz, speaking of language barriers and our first quiz is to show how many Americans are actually affected by language barriers when they're traveling abroad. So our question to you and the audience is, what percentage of American speaks more than just English, is it 6%, 18%, 27% or 34%? And we'll give you all a minute to log your vote, Scott how many languages do you speak?
Scott: I speak English and sometimes my Baltimore dialect will get in the way and that would sound like its own language.....but just English unfortunately.
Julie: Indeed it does, you know, the problem sometimes in America is that we don't have the chance to practice that language so some of us may have taken Spanish in High School we don't necessarily have the opportunity to use it and then sometimes we lose it.
Scott: Right.
Julie: So do we have the results? Alright, so it looks as though we actually have a tie between 6% and 18% of American speaking more than one language, and what's the real answer, Scott?
Scott: The answer is 18% of American can speak a language other than English, and when you compare that to Europe we're definitely behind. In Europe that number is 53%
Julie: Makes sense.
Scott: Yep, but you know the good thing is that if language barriers are the only concern that your travelers have there's plenty of resources out there to help them so that shouldn't be a concern of theirs when they're traveling. Let's look at number two which is: evaluate the safety of their destination. When considering a destination, it's critical to review its safety and security with your travelers, obviously you're not going to encourage your travelers to go some place you believe to be unsafe, but if your clients are apprehensive about a location, there's a lot of resources that we can provide them. A great example is, I know someone who recently went to Israel. When people found out she was going she got responses ranging from "I'm jealous," “I hear it's fantastic" to "Oh, I wouldn't go anywhere over to that part of the world," so that's a great example of how you can see the variances of how people feel about a destination. So make sure again that your clients know that there are going to be resources depending on what spectrum they fall in to help them. So how can you address these fears? There are a number of website, blogs and government agencies with information about the safety and security of the destination. Consider even looking at what other countries are saying about certain destinations. Each country is going to have an equivalent to the U.S. State Department and they can provide different advice on what travelers may face because, in the U.S. we're going look at destination one way, where another country may look at it different way. So it's important to get kind of a mixture of what different countries are saying.
Julie: Very valuable and especially on a social media I think that's a great resource for people because a lot of times people seem to trust more so the opinions of folks who maybe had just been there versus an official website.
Scott: Yep, exactly, likewise a good travel insurance provider would have similar information that the traveler can look at, if you become a Roam Right partner, you and your clients can have access to RoamRight mobile app which have incredible detailed and up to date information about countries and territories around the world. Travelers can also contact our assistance provider directly to address any questions or concerns they may have about their travel destination. Our assistance agency has significant resources to address their questions including 19,000 sources of information in more than 30 languages, 50+ intelligence analysts across five continents, 24/7 global monitoring, and most importantly they have people in-country that can see the events first-hand. I can recall a case where someone called the assistance provider because they heard...well, they thought they heard gun shots in the street; the assistant provider was able to quickly call somebody that they had in-country and confirmed that those where not gunshots but were fireworks, so they were very easily and quickly able to put that traveler's mind at ease.
Julie: With travel insurance I think so many times people think about the financial benefit of having the insurance, they think if they cancel and then they’ll get money back on non-refundable stuff, but when there's that assistance piece of it, if that is emphasized with customers when they're signing up for their trip, then they really do feel okay about going to a place like that because literally if you have somebody who has that kind of knowledge just on the other end of a phone, you feel more protected.
Scott: Yep, exactly. That leads us into- reassure your clients that you know how to respond to an emergency or prepare them so that they know how to respond to an emergency. It's a far different thing if your travelers have a policy question versus they have a question about a doctor referral or a security event. So make sure that they know who to call for what type of situation. I spoke with an agent recently, we had a conversation and I said, "You offer travel insurance?" and they said that they didn't. And I asked in addition to the benefits just mentioned, I said, "What are you going to do in the event that your client has some type of emergency?" and his comment was that he has them contact him. And I said that's not going to work. Whether it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon or 2:30 in the morning, that agent is not going to have access to the global resources that that traveler needs nor are they going to have the experience of managing cases in that area, so I cannot stress enough that the benefit of travel insurance. The trip cancellation and all that is extremely important but, as you mentioned is very important also to know the assistance that's provided by travel insurance.
Julie: Absolutely.
Scott: As you review your client's travel insurance policy as we just mentioned, make sure that they know about the 24/7 emergency assistance services that are a part of the policy. They can as we've mentioned, they can call the assistance company before they travel to get information and they can also call the assistance company if the emergency happens while they're traveling.
Julie: Right, as well as the group leaders can do this too, and I think that's something that's really important when it's not just the individual travelers but it's also the group leaders that somebody going on a tour can have access to that kind of assistance. And again it gives then so much better information on what to do if there is something that's happening live, while they're calling.
Scott: Yep, yep, exactly and then as we've mentioned they've got the experience in dealing with those situations because they do it every day. Another thing is lost luggage – this can be a very stressful situation for travelers. Again that's where the travel insurance will have the benefits to help with luggage that’s lost, but it can also help with tracking the individual luggage. The assistance company is going to call the airline, they're going to assess the situation, they're going to help track that luggage, they're going be in constant communication with the travelers themselves, and something that's very important is when people traveling their itineraries is changing from day to day so the assistance company is going to make certain that when their luggage is found that it's going to be delivered to the right location.
Julie: So much better than getting off your plane and then standing in that long line at the baggage assistance at the airport.
Scott: Right, yep. So let us worry about the individual's lost luggage they've got enough to--they didn't plan their trip to have to deal with that. Medical concerns are another major factor for travelers going abroad. Now in the U.S. we're very use to having ample access to medical care and we’re accustomed to receiving a certain level of care. Internationally it's not always like that. Again, reassure your clients that they have access to services if they have any type of medical situation, it can be something as simple as well, it can be pretty significant but somebody is traveling, they left their medication at home or they run out. Our assistance providers can help them get that prescription refilled or if somebody needs a referral to a doctor because their child has an ear ache, we can make sure that we get them to a physician that can speak English if they need that. And that is critical that we can provide the level of care that they need.
Julie: I think this is again, especially when you look at the people who have the most resources and time to make especially international trips, it's usually the retired folks. And those people not only typically have more pre-existing conditions that might make them hesitate to travel, but they also know that Medicare does not travel outside of the U.S. So if they don't have the travel medical insurance that you're talking about, they won't even be able to take those trips that they work their whole lives to retire and then wanting to be able to travel.
Scott: Right. Yep, and you know kind of connected to that is we're also used to be able to--we're used to walking in a hospital and getting seen right away and dealing with billing issues later. A lot of foreign hospitals require payment upfront before they'll render care or they'll require payment before they'll discharge a patient. We've actually seen hospitals that had held people's passport and would not return them until they got payment. So travel insurance can help with providing payments to foreign providers so that delay is not an issue that the traveler has to deal with.
Julie: We hear those kinds of stories these days because it's happening quite a bit.
Scott: Yep.
Julie: Alright, we came up to another poll and our question is, in 2014 what percentage of U.S. travelers who traveled overseas did not have travel insurance? Now I'm going to admit here that I fell into this category when I was younger and traveling all over the world and now that I'm on the other side and I realized what could have happen I'll never fall into this bucket again. But I'm anxious to see our audience voting here, it looks as though the majority of our audience... oh, no wait, more votes are coming in, still the majority of our audience today 43% of listeners feels that 72% of U.S. travelers visiting overseas did not have travel insurance. You know what? You all are pretty smart because that is the answer.
Scott: It is indeed, yep, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Travel Tourism office 72% of U.S. travelers going overseas did not have travel insurance. There's something that we haven't really touched on that I think it's extremely important going back to the last slide is, when these hospitals require payments or let's say somebody needs to be evacuated if you don't have travel insurance you could be looking at $10,000 that you need to come up with immediately. Or if you need to be evacuated; we've had evacuation that cost more than a $100,000. I may be traveling in the wrong circle, but I don't know anybody that can come up with that kind of cash that quickly.
Julie: Well, I'm thinking about the guy that we had last year who traveled to France, which you think France is...
Scott: Great, great care
Julie: It's definitely not third world, they have great care, great doctors. That gentleman had some issues. He bought a $28 travel medical policy with us and then he ran into medical issues, went into the hospital in France had to be airlifted back to the US because of his condition and his total expenses amounted to over $117,000.
Scott: And he paid $28.
Julie: I know. And travel insurance picked up the rest of that. And he was a healthy guy. There was no pre-existing anything but you just don't know when it can happen and you're right. I don't know there may people, unless you're a celebrity with that black MX card, I don't know anybody who can flop down $117,000 to be able to leave.
Scott: Yup. And it's not the harp on this point too much but it really is something that you should stop and think about. Again, we've seen that people maxxed out their credit cards, they've had family who wiped out their savings and retirement to pay for these expenses and when you look at $28 that's a great, great return on investment.
Julie: It really is.
Scott: On a more severe note, what if your travelers went perish when the attacks occurred in November? Our team is ready to help. I can't stress this next benefit or tool that we provide strongly enough. You know, when an event occurs, RoamRight takes action to identify who is in that country, so we're going to look at people who have bought the insurance and as part of their travel itinerary, we're going to see if anybody is in that country and we're going to proactively send them out an email asking if they're okay, saying, "We know you're in country, is everything okay?" Is there anything that we can do in providing them with the tools to get in touch with our systems provider if they should happen to need services. We did that recently for Paris, we've also done it for Turkey, Egypt and Jakarta. And, something that as providers of traveler updates, we don't just send it if it's something that's minor. We're not going to be blasting out emails to people during their trip if it's not something that is significant that they need to know about.
Julie: Right. And, so many people when they hear that we market travel insurance, the question is always, "Well, does that stuff really ever pay out?" Isn't it just like any other insurance company where it's difficult to actually get any benefit out of it after I purchased it? And this is a great example where as soon as we hear about... We're not waiting for the customers to come to us. We want them to be safe. We promise them that we would be there as a safety net and so we reach out directly to them to see if they need our help and we're there to provide it.
Scott: Yup. And, thankfully in the situations we've had, everyone's been safe, but if they did need us, we were again prepared to help them, providing them with the tools and resources that they would need to get in touch with our assistance provider. This next slide is a real testimonial that we received and I'm not going to read through it but if everyone wants to take a few minutes to look at it...
Julie: This customer happened to be very excited about this benefit that we offer because she was in Paris and she woke up Saturday morning finding out about everything that had happened, as well as having an email from us reminding her of how to access her assistance and her benefits. And she not only gave us this review online but she actually thanked our customer service folks in a separate email because that did give her the peace of mind that she was hoping to have when she bought her insurance.
Scott: She felt that she wasn't alone and that we're there to help her.
Julie: That's right.
Scott: Everything you want to do when preparing a trip is make sure that your travelers have access to information where they can research things on the country where the destination where they're going, information like immunization requirements and recommendations, entry and exit requirements, country specific social customs, real time security and crime analysis and hospital pharmacy look up. All this information, as you can see, can be found on our mobile app as we've discussed earlier. And something that's important to think about when somebody's traveling is, let's say, they have a chronic illness or they're traveling with children. It's very important that they can research the level of care in the country where they're going, look up hospitals, look up pharmacies, and prepare ahead of time if they should need those services.
Julie: Right. And just having that ability put your travelers at ease to see that there are hospitals out there that an assistance provider has already gone through the vetting process. So it's not just any hospital that ends up on that list. It's a hospital that has the standard of care that we as Americans would be used to having.
Scott: Yup, great point. The other thing that you want to make sure is that they have access to their travel insurance policy, in addition to their ID Card, make sure that they can have a copy of their benefits and their policy. When they want to also have that comfort level that if they do have a medical situation that they have those benefits to help them in that situation. Make sure that they have access to important travel documents, make sure that they copies of their passports, their ticket, their visas, luggage tags and any other documents that they may need and make sure that they're easily accessible.
Julie: That's really important. I remember back in the old days and I'm going to date myself here a little bit but pre-internet, definitely pre-app - the advice is from travel agents used to be to make a photocopy of your passport and pick it with you in a separate place from where you keep your actual passport. In case your passport gets stolen, then you have a copy that you can go to the US Consulate and arrange to get back into the country when you're ready to leave. And since then I have friends who say, "Well, I just email myself a copy of my passport." But through the amount of times that, I don't know about you, but I have a lot of friends whose emails have been hacked. You don't really want to take that approach either. That approach is one step more safe than just carrying around a photocopy but if you upload your passport to our mobile app, that has specific encryption on it that will keep that information safe. And you can still access it from any other mobile device in case, unfortunately, if your cell phone is stolen.
Scott: Right. And it's also great way if you are going to have to file a claim, you can go ahead and take picture of the receipt and store it in there as well.
Julie: That's great.
Scott: Also, it's important that your travelers have access to travel alerts. You know, when you're traveling, you get caught up in everything, you're having a great time and it's easy be cut off from the outside world. That's again where the mobile app can come in. Using the RoamRight app, your travelers can set up alerts so they are notified of any events that might impact their travel plans. This is based on the destination that they have in their app, but they can also have it to alert them of anything that happens within 100 miles of their current destination. Again, that's important that if they're in London, they might not want to know about any alerts that happen in Egypt. So it cuts down on the number of alerts that they're going to get and the anxiety that they may experience by getting different alerts coming in. And then once your travelers go on their trip and come home, there are still a lot of things that, as travel professionals, we can help them with. We can help them issue a claim if they need to, we can track that claim through some of our tools that we have available, the forms can even be downloaded to the clients. And something that is very nice with us is the forms can be filed electronically...
Julie: Like really electronically.
Scott: Like truly paperless online, no fax, no email involved. You know, this makes the claims process much quicker and easier for the clients. So to recap, how can you help your travelers prepare and be ready in this unpredictable world that we're in? One, acknowledge their concerns. Two, evaluate the safety of their destination. And I certainly hope we've provided a lot of tools that are available to do that. Demonstrate how to respond in an emergency - who to call for what type of situation. Help them prepare for an emergency and as we just mentioned, the system when they come home with any claim that they may lead to this event.
Julie: Makes sense to me. Alright, so we've put our contact information up here on the screen. There are a lot of ways that you can contact us. I did promise you at the beginning of the presentation that we were going to give you an opportunity for a special drawing for those of you who are on the web and are also attend the FTA conference. So when you are there, please visit us at booth F6 and hand your business card to Scott or Lisa and your business card will be entered into a drawing to win a Fitbit. So special webinar Fitbit for everybody who participated today. Also, you can visit our website to learn more about our products at roamright.com/partners. We have a RoamRight Partner's Facebook page. And, of course, as we mentioned before, we're on twitter @roamright and Scott and Lisa's direct information, including their LinkedIn information is up on the screen. So now we have time for questions. We have quite a few that have come in so I will work through some of them and we also have Austin Bowers here with us. Austin is from our customer service group. Probably knows a lot more than Scott and I do, about specific product information. So we asked Austin to join us here today.
Scott: Before we get in the questions, something I forgot to mention. We talked a lot about the mobile app. If anyone's interested in getting a set up with the demo account or I'm happy to walk through the functions of the app with them. Please get in touch with me and I'll do that.
Julie: That's really good point because if you don't already have the app, there is some functionality on the app that you need to have a policy in order to access. So Scott can give you a demo of the full capabilities of the app which is actually an award-winning app, I might plug. So it's really something that is not like any other app that's out there in the industry and if you're in the travel business, you can see how it's really valuable for your travelers. So let's just go through some of the questions here. One question is: Is cancel for any reason included in insurance policy?
Scott: It is not. It would be considered an upgrade. And with our plans you would want to purchase that within 21 days of making your initial trip deposit. So if you go to our website, you're buying the insurance and you're in that time frame that's going to pop up as an upgrade option.
Julie: Okay. And the percentage covered for cancel for any reason perhaps?
Scott: It covers up to 75% of non-refundable trip cost.
Julie: Okay. Very good. Who is the assistance provider? I think you mentioned...
Scott: Yup, Oncall International and we also work with IJET.
Julie: Okay. Very good. And do all the travelers get that email at an emergency?
Scott: Nope. Again, we're going to look at who we have in the system as being in that location and that's who we're going to reach out to.
Julie: So very important then that if you're a travel provider, you let us know what the destination is.
Scott: Exactly.
Julie: Okay
Scott: Again, we don't want people to worry when they're on the trip to worry getting all these alerts if it doesn't pertain to them. So only if we have them in that location.
Julie: Okay. How much does the app cost?
Scott: The good news it's free. The app is free. As we already mentioned, there are certain functions that you can just get from the app if you buy a policy then you will use that policy information to get the full features of the mobile app. But it is free.
Julie: Okay. And this question may actually be a related question but I want to make sure we cover it: So I downloaded the app but I don't have an account. How does this work? I'll jump in on that one. As I was mentioning before, we'd love to give you a demo account so that you can explore the app. Scott can walk you through it and then you can have a demo log in for yourself. Go ahead if you're interested in that, type us a message in the chat box or email Scott directly and he'll get you set up. We have some specific information that comes from IJET, which is our security provider, that is only specific to the destination. So if you don't have a policy, we wouldn't have a destination for you so you wouldn't be able to see that kind of thing. But some of the other trip planning items, as well as things like the prescription drug translations are in there that you can see. So, for example, when I was in China looking for children's Advil, what is that called in Mandarin. That kind of translation information is in the app regardless of whether you have a policy. And we should mention, as most apps are, it's available for download in the Apple App Store, in Google Play if you're an Android person, and we also have it in the Kindle App Store for Amazon devices. I feel like a commercial there. Okay, so going back to our questions: 72% was with an exclamation point, so I guess we're referring there back to the number of people who don't purchase travel insurance. So, what are our suggestions for getting more consumers to purchase?
Scott: Sure. Lisa and I would be happy to provide some stories that we've heard from other agents or tour operators or brokers. We also have a travel insurance learning center on our website where you can get ideas on how to talk to your travelers about insurance and that is visit www.roamright.com/partners to read it.
Julie: Okay. Very good. Do we offer annual agent plan?
Scott: We do. Yup. We have a great agent plan and what's nice about it is it allows you to select... It comes with $2,500 of trip cancellation coverage but allows you to upgrade up to $10,000. So if you do a lot of travel within a year and $2,500 is not going to be enough, you can upgrade to $10,000. And if you're interested in purchasing that, you would need to contact me or Lisa and we can get that information, too.
Julie: Okay. Very good. And then another question along with that is: Can you tell us about the annual plans? Is there anything about the annual plans that you want to talk about there?
Scott: You know, the ability to pick the trip cancellation coverage is excellent. It also includes, it comes with the pre-ex condition waver which is very unusual for an agent plan. You know, most plan, you have to buy it within a certain time frame, but with this it automatically comes with that. It also includes medical evacuation security and natural disaster evacuation coverage as well.
Julie: Okay. There's a question here that has a competitor's name in it so I'll keep the competitor's name as other travel insurance company. But the question is: How does RoamRight compare with other travel insurance companies? I'd be happy to jump in on that one.
Scott: Sure. And I'll chime in when you're done.
Julie: Okay. Very good. You know, Roam Right was built to be fully integrated for everything. So customer service claims, marketing, IT, all under the same roof. And so what that means is that we are able to respond very quickly when something is bubbling up, say in customer service, where we can get messages out the customers, we can have our customer service folks walk right over to the claims department and get the customer what they need as quickly as they can. The other, I guess, umbrella comparison within the area of technology because we were built not in the old days but in the technology age, the entire company revolves around how can we use technology to best service the client and the traveler. So we have the mobile app, which we've talked a lot about and as I said, that's an award-winning mobile app. It really does have some really cool features so you should check that out. We have an agent portal that where you can track commissions, you can download marketing materials that you can use. There are many things that our agents have access to on their desktop because that portal was developed. The paperless claims thing is so key. I can't tell you how many times - because, of course, I look at the competition -and I see that somebody says they've got online claims but really what they have is a pdf document that you can be emailed and then you print it out, you fill it out and you have to fax would be a four-letter word, sorry three-letter word, but you have to figure out how to fax a fax. Our paperless claims process is truly paperless. I could sit here and do it from my desktop. I can take pictures. We're not one of those travel insurance companies that requires you to send them originals through the mail. I can take a picture of my receipt on my phone, I can upload it, I can send it in that way for my claims. So the fact that we are constantly looking for ways to make our process for the customer and for our travel partners, such as travel agents and tour companies, as frictionless as possible through technology, I think it's a really big differentiator.
Scott: Yup. And just two quick things to add to that. You'll find that our plans are extremely competitive, both with benefits and pricing. We actually have some benefits that most don't. All our plans include security evacuation coverage as well as natural disaster evacuation coverage. A lot of plans require the pre-ex waver. If you're going to get that, the plan has to be purchased within 15 days of the initial trip deposit. Ours is 21 days. And we also have some custom plans that only our partners can provide to their clients. They're not available on our general website and there's some... What we've done that for is we wanted to have some loyalty for our partners, you know, if a client likes the product, they have to go back to our partners to get that plan. And then just one quick thing on the claims, we also assign a claims examiner for each client, so the client doesn't have to call up and talk to a different claims examiner each time. They're going to talk to that same person. So they may talk to Mary, or Chris, or Ed, or whoever it is so they don't have to go over the story every time about their claim. They've got that one assigned person.
Julie: Alright. So we'll stop tuning RoamRight rounds.
Scott: Okay.
Julie: Another question. This one is: Most travel insurance exclude guests who have cancer as a pre-existing medical condition even if they purchased in time for the waver. Will RoamRight insure these travelers assuming they're medically fit to travel the time of purchase.
Austin: Often. Okay, absolutely. Cancer's actually a great example of when pre-ex waver becomes really important. It can be an illness that people battle for a long time but may not impede their daily activities or their ability to travel. So assuming that the affected party is fit for travel at the time they purchased their insurance and they buy within the 21 days and they ensure the full cost of their trip, they'll admit all of the requirements to be eligible for that pre-existing conditions waver and then if unfortunately their condition changes or deteriorates closer to their trip, they would be covered for trip cancellation because they have that pre-existing conditions waver.
Julie: Very good. And good to know because a lot of people who have that condition go up like to do bucket list trip.
Austin: Sure. Absolutely. It's probably the textbook example of when pre-ex waver is really appropriate.
Julie: Yup. Question about cruise is: How do we track and locate passengers when they're on a cruise? I guess this is probably relating to the emails when there's an event. I'll jump in and answer this one. We have to be able to know destination in order to be able to send an email to our insured travelers. So if that's not part of the information on the roster that sent over to us at the time that they're purchasing coverage - I'm assuming we're talking about somebody maybe who as a part of a tour - then we wouldn't know. And then, as Scott said, we wouldn't be talking to them about events that are happening all over the world because we don't want to concern people.
Austin: I would also say that, especially with cruises, a lot of times they travel to a particular area of islands, we do have options for destination where they can select your Caribbean as a destination and that can encompass more than one particular port. And we do have the option through our customer service department to add multiple destinations to a policy, so if you select the destination where they'll be the longest but they will definitely be visiting through a three other countries as well, you can call a team member and add those additional destination to their policy.
Julie: And I'll also point out that the app, if they have the app on their mobile phone, that can identify them based on where their geographically located. So in terms of alerts coming on the app, that would be another way, even if we don't know where they're located, that the app would know where they'll located and it looks at events within a hundred miles of where they are currently located and provides those alerts.
Scott: Yeah. And if they're going to be visiting multiple destinations, they can put those in their destination folder in the app and it's only going to send alerts for those destinations.
Julie: Right. And now, here's another question that seems to me pretty easy. I'll let Austin cover it. Do you cover replacement items if my traveler needs like toiletries when they're luggage has lost.
Austin: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we do have a benefit with most of our plans called the baggage delay benefit and it's exactly valid to purchase items to get your travelers through in the interim until their actual baggage arrived. So things like clothes, personal care items, things like that. They would just save their receipts and then they can file the claim for reimbursement when they return home and they can use the baggage delay benefit in combination with the baggage lost benefit if, unfortunately, their bags don't arrive at all.
Julie: Okay. Thank you very much for participating today. We hope to see you at FTA next week.
Scott: Indeed please. If you're going please stop by and say hi.
Julie: Alright. There you go. Have a great rest of your day.
Scott: Thank you.
Austin: Thank you.
Julie: Thanks.
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