Insights for consumers
Read your travel insurance policy carefully to understand what is covered before you travel. The cover provided by a complimentary travel insurance policy attached to a credit card is often more limited than a comprehensive policy where you pay a premium.
Lost passport delays travel
Oliver* travelled to Australia in December 2025, planning to return to New Zealand a few days later. On the morning of his return flight, Oliver couldn’t find his passport.
Oliver notified the relevant authorities and applied for an emergency passport. This meant that Oliver had to stay in Australia for two extra days.
Oliver claims on his travel insurance
After returning to New Zealand, Oliver made a claim under his credit card’s complimentary travel insurance policy for the cost of the emergency passport and the additional expenses he incurred staying in Australia longer than expected.
The insurer partly accepts the claim
The insurer accepted Oliver’s claim to cover the cost of his passport but declined to cover the expenses incurred for the additional two day stay in Australia.
Oliver complained to FSCL about his insurer’s decision.
The insurer says the policy does not cover extra expenses
The insurer said that their policy had a specific and detailed list of events that were covered, and expenses resulting from the loss of a passport was not one of them.
The insurer said that the insurance cover for travel disruption was for situations when flights are delayed, cancelled, or where a person could not board due to overbooking.
Oliver argued that insuring the loss meant the resulting expenses should be covered
Oliver believed that the additional expenses he incurred should have been covered because his insurer accepted that the loss of his passport was an insured event. He said his additional expenses should be covered because they resulted from him losing his passport.
FSCL investigates the complaint
We reviewed the insurance policy’s terms and conditions and found that the insurer had assessed Oliver’s claim correctly. There was no cover for expenses incurred from losing travel documents. The costs of accommodation and meals were only covered if travel was extended due to flight delays, cancellations, or denied boarding because of overbooking. However, Oliver’s flight had continued as normal, so it was not delayed or cancelled.
Oliver would have been denied boarding because he didn’t have a valid passport for international travel. However, the policy only provided cover when denied boarding was due to overbooking. We also found that while there was nothing that expressly excluded Oliver’s claim, the circumstances detailed under the policy were exhaustive, and it would not be fair for us to include additional circumstances.
We also agreed with the insurer’s assessment that the cover for the costs of the lost travel documents did not extend to covering expenses resulting from the loss of those travel documents.
What was the outcome of FSCL’s investigation
We decided that Oliver should discontinue his complaint, and he accepted our decision.
