It’s a well known fact that anywhere on Earth you’ll find a happy-go-lucky Australian traveler with an accent broad enough to make you cringe. What’s less well known is that Aussie’s travel insurance won’t cover anything — delay of trip, medical treatment, damage to possessions — caused by a terrorist incident.  

This was the situation slain child Julian Cadman’s mother, Jom, found herself in after the Barcelona attack. Family friend Scott Bowman set up a crowdfunding site to help with funeral costs for Julian and her (potentially years of) ongoing surgery. The crowdfunding site has currently raised $170,000.

He told The Daily Telegraph on Friday that “their travel insurance might not cover acts of terrorism and Jom is going to have ongoing medical expenses”.

Really? Not covered?

As Bernard Keane wrote in Crikey on Wednesday, we are “just as much at risk of attacks as ever, from as many terrorists as ever, representing a greater variety of terror groups than ever”.

Despite this, funeral costs, changes to hotels and flights, damaged property and medical fees resulting from a serious terror attack are not common or standard inclusions in travel insurance, especially cheaper ones.

“Terrorism is a relatively new issue for insurers to deal with. If insurers don’t understand what level of risk a factor poses, or there’s uncertainty in it, they are reluctant to offer coverage of it,” said a spokesman for the Insurance Council of Australia.

But over the last couple of years, terrorism inclusions have begun to appear.

“As the industry gets more data and that data becomes more granular, more companies will start to include terrorism coverage.”

He added consumer demand for specific terrorism clauses in travel cover is not particularly high.

“Out of hundreds of thousands of phone calls and website hits annually, we’ve had less than a dozen enquiries about terrorism cover for travel insurance.”

The other sticky issue these days is whether an attack is officially considered terrorism? Turns out, if you’re wanting to claim, insurance companies are going by what governments officially declare.