Admiral, Churchill and Direct Line stop selling new travel insurance policies due to coronavirus

Admiral, Churchill and Direct Line all said that they were pausing the sale of new policies to focus on existing customers. All three confirmed that if you already have a policy with them, you WILL continue to be covered. 

LV became the first major insurer to stop selling travel insurance, while other providers have withdrawn certain products or inserted clauses limiting cover into their new policies.

For full help on travel insurance and your rights on cancelling holidays, see our Covid-19 Coronavirus Help guide.

What are other insurers doing?

Here's how we've seen some other insurers limit cover in recent days:

• Aviva is no longer offering 'travel disruption' cover or 'airspace closure' cover to new customers. Travel disruption cover usually provides additional protection if your journey is disrupted, for instance if your flight is unexpectedly cancelled. However, in Aviva's case, the key benefit was that it meant you would be covered if  the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised against travel to your destination after you've bought the policy.

• The AA is no longer quoting for single-trip policies covering Italy, France or Spain. 

• Axa and Coverwise have said "any new policy purchased, or new trip booked covered by an existing annual multi-trip policy after 9am on 13 March 2020, will not cover any cancellation claim in relation to coronavirus".

• Insure and Go has said that policies bought "from 11.59pm on 11 March 2020 will no longer provide cover for claims relating to coronavirus disease; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) or any mutation of these".

• LV has stopped offering travel insurance altogether temporarily. 

What do the insurers say?

In a statement on its website, Admiral said: "We've made the difficult decision to pause the sale of new travel insurance policies in light of the global impact of coronavirus (Covid-19). We considered different options... before introducing this temporary measure.

"We strongly believe that pausing the sale of new policies to focus on our existing customers is the right decision and will keep monitoring the situation. Our existing customers are not affected."

Churchill and Direct Line, which have the same underwriter, told us the decision was temporary and added: "We have not taken this decision lightly and we carefully considered many different options prior to reaching this decision.

"For our customers who already hold a travel insurance policy with us there is no change and they can continue to contact us to make a claim or amend their policy."