Travel insurance claim rejected for non-disclosure? What to do next

If your travel insurance claim was rejected because you "failed to disclose" a medical condition, do not assume the rejection is lawful. UK law grades disclosure mistakes: only deliberate or reckless misrepresentation lets an insurer treat the policy as if it never existed and keep the premium. An honest, careless mistake attracts a proportionate remedy - and often the claim should still be paid, in whole or in part.

Insurers apply the harshest reading of these rules more often than the law supports. This guide explains the actual framework, the questions that expose a weak rejection, and how to build the challenge.

Key takeaways

• The Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 (CIDRA) replaced the old "disclose everything" duty: your duty is to take reasonable care not to misrepresent when answering the questions the insurer actually asked.
• Remedies are graded: deliberate or reckless misrepresentation can void the policy; careless mistakes get proportionate remedies; and if the insurer would have insured you anyway, the misrepresentation may change nothing.
• The insurer must show what it would have done with full information - underwriting evidence, not assertion.
• Unrelated conditions often should not sink a claim: a missed blood-pressure declaration is a weak basis for refusing a claim about a stolen bag.
• Rejections escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free.

The framework the rejection has to fit

Under CIDRA, when an insurer says you misrepresented something, work through three questions - each in your favour more often than rejection letters suggest:

1. Did you fail to take reasonable care? Judged against a reasonable consumer answering the questions asked - including how clear the questions were. Medical screening scripts can be ambiguous: "have you ever been treated for a heart condition" is not obviously about a one-off palpitation investigation years ago that led nowhere. Ambiguity is read against the insurer that wrote the question.

2. If so, what kind of misrepresentation was it?

The insurer carries the burden of showing a misrepresentation was deliberate or reckless - forgetting a routine prescription at a checkout screening is a very different thing from concealing a scheduled operation.

3. What would the insurer actually have done? This is the step rejection letters routinely skip. For careless misrepresentation:

• Would have insured you anyway, on the same terms → the claim stands.
• Would have charged more → the claim is scaled: if you paid two-thirds of the right premium, you get roughly two-thirds of the claim.
• Would have added an exclusion → only claims falling inside that exclusion are affected; unrelated claims are paid.
• Would have declined cover → the policy can be voided, but the premium comes back.

An insurer relying on any of these must evidence its underwriting position at the time - ask for it.

Sources: Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 and Financial Ombudsman Service guidance on travel insurance complaints. Last checked: 04.07.2026.

The questions that expose a weak rejection

Put these to the insurer, in writing:

1. Which question in the medical screening do you say I answered incorrectly? Quote it exactly.
2. Do you say the misrepresentation was deliberate, reckless or careless - and on what evidence?
3. What would you have done had the information been given - same terms, higher premium, exclusion, or decline? Provide the underwriting evidence.
4. If the remedy is proportionate, show the calculation.
5. How is the undisclosed matter connected to the claim I actually made?

A rejection that cannot answer these cleanly is a position, not a decision.

What evidence helps most

• the screening questions as you saw them - screenshots of the online flow if possible, or ask the insurer for the script and your recorded answers
• your medical records for the disputed condition - what you knew, and when, at the time you bought the policy
• your GP's view on how the condition would reasonably have been described
• the policy documents and certificate, showing what was declared
• the claim itself: what happened, costs, receipts, reports
• the rejection letter and any underwriting evidence provided

How to structure the challenge

1. State the claim and the rejection reason in two sentences.
2. Address the disclosure point head-on: what the question asked, what you understood, why your answer was reasonable care - or at worst careless.
3. Demand the CIDRA analysis: classification, underwriting evidence, proportionate calculation.
4. Separate the claim from the condition where they are unrelated.
5. State the outcome sought: the claim paid (or paid proportionately), plus interest, and compensation for handling failures where the process itself was poor.

When and how to escalate

If the insurer maintains the rejection in its final response, or eight weeks pass, you can take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which applies exactly this framework and regularly overturns disproportionate non-disclosure rejections. The Financial Ombudsman Service is free, independent, and you keep any compensation it awards. The usual six-month window from the final response applies - check the current time limits.

For context, our analysis of published Ombudsman decisions shows insurance complaints can succeed, but non-disclosure disputes still turn on the exact question, answer and underwriting evidence.

For the broader approach to disputed claims - delay, underpayment and rejection tactics across all insurance - see how to challenge an insurer.

How HeyRefund can help

Non-disclosure disputes turn on precise wording: the question asked, the answer given, and what the insurer's underwriting would really have done. HeyRefund helps you assemble the screening flow, the medical timeline and the CIDRA questions into a challenge the insurer has to answer properly - not with another template letter.

Challenging and escalating are free, and you keep any award. HeyRefund just sharpens the file.