HelloSafe Travel Insurance Market Report 2026

$24-27B

The global travel insurance market in 2024 (market research estimates)

£2B

The UK market, roughly a twelfth of the world total

78%

Of Britons have travel cover at least once, but 1 in 4 still travels uninsured

23.6%

Of every premium pound paid out in claims on add-on travel cover (FCA)

A market measured in tens of billions

First, the size. The global travel insurance market was worth an estimated $24 to 27 billion in premiums in 2024, with the United Kingdom one of its longest-established and best-documented markets.

At around £2 billion, the UK sits among the world's top three or four travel insurance markets, behind the United States and China. It is a mature market rather than a fast-growing one, shaped for decades by strong comparison-site distribution and near-universal awareness of the product. The rest of this report works down from that number: how the market divides, who carries the risk, how it is sold, and how profitable it is.

Globally, the growth is not done. Market research projects the sector to expand by around 18% a year through the end of the decade, which would put the global market on track to more than double by the early 2030s. Four rational forces underpin that pace, and each applies in Britain too. First, trip costs keep rising, and because a policy is priced as a share of trip value or duration, premiums climb with them. Second, insurance is increasingly embedded straight into the booking, where 100% of the largest airlines now offer it and attach rates rise with every checkout. Third, penetration still has headroom even in a mature market like the UK: roughly 78% of Britons have ever bought cover, but on any single trip about 1 in 4 still travels without it, so each point gained widens the market. Fourth, medical-cost inflation abroad pushes travellers toward higher, and pricier, medical limits. Even discounting the most bullish models, the direction is a market growing several times faster than travel volume itself.

Global total is a market-research estimate (Allied Market Research $23.8B, Grand View $27.05B for 2024); the UK figure (around £2bn) is drawn from ABI and market-research sources; the per-market bars blend national associations and market research, scopes harmonised for comparison and shown in USD for global ranking purposes only. The ~18%-a-year outlook is a market-research projection (Allied models an 18.4% CAGR to 2034), not a HelloSafe forecast.

In Britain, the claim that matters most is medical

Unlike some markets built around trip cancellation, the British product still leans heavily on the medical and assistance risk of falling ill or being injured abroad.

Medical claims account for 34% of all travel claims by number but 55% of the money paid out, at an average of roughly £1,528 per medical claim, reflecting the cost of treatment and repatriation abroad rather than domestic NHS-style costs. The ABI's members paid £472 million across more than 500,000 travel claims in 2024. Comparison sites remain the dominant sales channel, with Compare the Market, MoneySuperMarket and GoCompare doing much of the heavy lifting, while packaged bank accounts, which bundle in an annual multi-trip policy alongside other perks, remain a significant source of cover for a large share of Britons.

How many Britons actually insure

The headline figure looks reassuring, but it hides a real gap on any single trip.

Roughly 78% of Britons have bought travel insurance at some point, one of the highest ever-insured rates in the world and well above the global average of around 45%. But that lifetime figure flatters the market: on any given trip, an estimated 1 in 4 UK travellers still sets off with no cover at all, often assuming a bank card or domestic health arrangement will cover them abroad. Average premiums rise sharply with age, from around £38 for a single-trip policy for a traveller aged 36 to 40, up to roughly £190 for the 71-to-75 age bracket, as medical risk is priced in. Every point of penetration gained on any given trip is a market that widens.

The value chain: who does what

Behind a single travel insurance policy stand four different businesses. Confusing them is the most common mistake made about this market.

The brand a traveller sees, a comparison site, a bank, an airline, an agency, is almost never the company carrying the risk. The risk sits with an insurer; between the two sit the managers who build and run the product and the assistance companies who answer the phone at 2 a.m. abroad. Reading the market means keeping these layers apart.

A managing general agent (MGA) designs, prices and administers a program on an insurer's paper without holding the risk; an assistance company runs the medical and repatriation network; a third-party administrator handles claims. One group can play several roles at once.

The insurers and assistance behind the brands

The risk concentrates in a short list of carriers and assistance groups operating in the UK, several of them owned by, or partnered with, the same global players consolidating the wider market.

The biggest move of the year on the global stage was consolidation. In December 2024 Zurich bought AIG's global personal travel business, Travel Guard, for about $600 million plus an earn-out, folding it into Zurich Cover-More, which now serves more than 20 million customers a year through 200-plus partners, including UK relationships. Allianz Partners remains the single largest travel underwriter by volume worldwide and sits behind many of the UK's best-known travel insurance brands, discloses a travel-specific line of about $3.5 billion in 2024, inside roughly $11 billion of total revenue.

In the UK specifically, the risk sits with a recognisable set of names: Aviva, AXA UK, Allianz Partners, Direct Line, Admiral and AIG, alongside specialists built around older or higher-risk travellers such as Staysure, AllClear, Saga and Post Office travel insurance. On the assistance side, Great Lakes (part of Munich Re) and Allianz Partners sit behind a large share of UK consumer brands. Most of those consumer brands carry none of this risk themselves; they rent a balance sheet, as the table below shows.

Named-carrier links are verified from issuer and underwriter disclosures.

How Britons buy: comparison sites lead, digital is pulling ahead

Price-comparison websites lead UK distribution by a wide margin. Behind them, packaged bank accounts and direct digital channels are pulling the rest of the market.

Compare the Market, MoneySuperMarket and GoCompare between them account for a large share of policies sold, as British consumers default to shopping cover on price. Packaged bank accounts, current accounts that bundle in annual multi-trip cover alongside breakdown cover or mobile phone insurance, remain a significant channel, particularly for frequent travellers who never separately shop for a standalone policy. Internationally, the equivalent digital shift is stark: between 2022 and 2024, online aggregators grew 49.4% and direct-to-consumer sales 46.6%, far faster than traditional agents. At checkout, attach rates on comparable digital channels reach 18 to 24% (Mordor Intelligence).

The embedded wave

The fastest shift is happening at the point of sale, where insurance is becoming a feature of the booking rather than a separate product bought after the fact.

According to the Ancileo benchmark, 100% of the forty largest airlines worldwide offered travel insurance in 2025, up from 70% in 2022, and 90% now build it straight into the booking flow, a pattern UK airlines and travel platforms increasingly follow. The mechanics are maturing too: 58% present insurance as an active opt-in, 39% as a forced choice, and only 3% as a pre-ticked box, a practice fading fast under regulatory pressure, including in the UK.

Where the premium pound goes

One question the market rarely volunteers: of every pound of premium, how much comes back to the traveller? Britain's own regulator has answered it, and the answer reframes the market.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority publishes exactly this figure, and it is stark. Under the FCA's 2024 value-measures data, single-trip travel cover sold as an add-on paid out just 23.6% of premium in claims, the lowest of any general-insurance line the regulator tracks, against 54.4% for motor insurance. In other words, for every £100 paid in premium for an add-on travel policy, roughly £76 stays with insurers, managers and distributors before a single claim is paid.

The ABI's own figures put the claims side in context: its members paid out £472 million across more than 500,000 travel claims in 2024. Medical claims made up a third of claims by count but 55% by value, at an average of around £1,528 per medical claim, evidence that the payout gap is not about medical claims being under-served, but about how thin the margin is on the policies that never claim at all.

The European regulator's decomposition gives a useful international comparison. Of every premium pound, EIOPA's EU-wide breakdown returns about 40% in claims to travellers, 24% in commission to whoever sold the policy, 20% in the insurer's own costs, and 15% in net underwriting profit. Travel pays out less in claims than general non-life insurance (around 53%), yet nets a higher margin (15% versus 10%). Britain's add-on figure of 23.6% sits well below even that already-low EU average, making UK add-on travel cover one of the least generous general-insurance products sold anywhere the economics are actually measured.

EIOPA figures are regulator-grade EU averages (2017 data, published 2019), shown as shares of premium; they set the order of magnitude for the wider European picture. The FCA's 23.6% add-on travel payout figure (2024 value-measures data) is a UK primary source and the more relevant benchmark for this market. Comparison and add-on channels ran far higher on commission in the EU review, averaging 35% and reaching 89%.

The commission engine

Why does everyone want to sell travel insurance? Because it pays a margin few products offer, and Britain's own regulator has put a number on just how little comes back to the customer.

UK per-channel commissions are not routinely published, set in confidential distribution agreements between insurers, comparison sites and packaged-account providers, but the FCA's 23.6% payout figure for add-on travel makes the structure plain: the vast majority of every premium pound is absorbed before a claim is ever paid. Internationally, industry estimates put traditional agents at 20 to 37% of the premium, online platforms at 20 to 40%, full-service airlines near 24% and low-cost carriers often above 50%. Direct insurers keep that margin in-house. This is why comparison sites, banks and travel platforms all compete hard for the sale: it is high-margin ancillary revenue.

European (EIOPA) and UK (FCA) figures are regulator-grade; the per-channel bands are international industry estimates, not verified UK figures.

A consolidating, concentrated market

Behind the long tail of brands, ownership is concentrating, in the UK as elsewhere.

Where an independent source exists, concentration is high: Spain's top-five carriers hold 67% of premiums and the top ten 93%, and the UK market shows similar concentration among its handful of major carriers and assistance groups. Consolidation is the direction of travel globally, from Zurich's purchase of Travel Guard to nib's full exit from Australian and New Zealand travel underwriting, with World Nomads sold to IMG. A widely-cited figure putting a market's top-five carriers near 40% of premiums is vendor-only in origin and not carried here as fact for any single market.

Concentration figures: Spain is DBK Observatorio (market research); top-five concentration estimates for other markets, including the UK, are largely single-vendor estimates with a circularity risk, flagged and not headlined.

The 15 markets, and the UK's place among them

Size, share of travellers insured, leading channel and dominant product. The United Kingdom highlighted for reference.

Sources: national associations and market research, 2024. Scopes harmonised for comparison; figures kept in US dollars as this is a global ranking table.

The rules of the game

Regulation shapes both what gets sold and what gets disclosed, and the UK sits at the strict end of a wide international spectrum.

In the United Kingdom, travel insurance is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under the onshored Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) and the Insurance: Conduct of Business sourcebook (ICOBS), which set standards for how products are designed, priced and sold, including add-on cover bundled with a bank account or a booking. The FCA has gone further than most regulators by publishing product-level value-measures data, which is precisely how the 23.6% add-on travel payout figure came to light, a level of transparency that puts real pressure on insurers and distributors to prove their products are worth the price.

The contrast with the United States is sharp. There, travel insurance runs under the NAIC's Travel Insurance Model Act, which created a light-touch "limited lines" travel licence and no minimum loss ratio, so the economics of the US market stay largely hidden. The UK's FCA and the EU's EIOPA both sit at the transparent end of that spectrum, having publicly scrutinised how little add-on travel cover pays out. That disclosure gap between markets is itself one of the report's findings, and it is precisely because the UK discloses more that its own numbers look less flattering than opaque markets elsewhere.

What HelloSafe measures

Even in a well-disclosed market like the UK, the map has clear blank spots, and they are the same everywhere: the numbers distribution keeps to itself.

Even with the FCA's value-measures data, no UK regulator publishes a real, live attach rate by channel, a true per-comparison-site commission, or how pricing actually moves for the same traveller across Compare the Market, MoneySuperMarket, GoCompare and a packaged bank account on the same day. That private detail, the price actually paid by channel, the commission, the conversion, is exactly what HelloSafe measures. Its quote engine compares, for the same traveller, the price of cover by the channel that sells it; its Atlas platform observes real conversion and commission by actor family. Edition after edition, market by market, the report will make public what distribution keeps to itself.