An accreditation program for selling travel health insurance is in the pipeline, according to the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA) which is working with the travel insurance industry on a course that aims to bring consistency to the conversation between consumers and brokers.
ACTA, along with the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada’s (THiA) education committee, is building a travel health insurance course, which includes chapters on the insurance contract, product suite, pricing and underwriting, sales and distribution, claims and assistance, compliance, ethics and fraud.
Christine Chilton, director of education, ACTA, told
Insurance Business that the accreditation would create a ‘single standard’, which would “align all provinces and offer consistency in licensing requirements that will enable a consistent level of professional consultation in the sale of travel health Insurance to consumers.”
The plans come after the Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators (CCIR) published an issues paper on the “growing concern” over the complexity of the travel health insurance market.
The CCIR said in July that issues had been raised over public confidence in Canada’s travel insurance market, “which led the CCIR to believe that there is a potential for misalignment between consumer expectations and industry practices for travel insurance.”
Alex Bittner, President of THiA, told
Insurance Business that the organisation is in the stages of a second-edit of an “in-depth learning module” which will incorporate a curriculum and exam.
The course has been written by a professional writer, with detail taken from subject matter specialists on the education committee within THiA.
Bittner said that THiA is “exploring an online platform for education” which will be followed by testing, monitoring and providing CE credits.
The aim is to finalize the curriculum edits by the end of the year, and complete the online component in 2017, he said.
After that, the long-term plan is for the council of regulators to recognize the accreditation as the national standard for selling travel health insurance.
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