PassportCard Australia is making in-roads in the market since its local reboot in early 2023, with customer numbers just about on par with the travel insurance provider’s figures during its initial launch back in 2018.
Speaking at a Luxperience Bespoke event in Sydney on Wednesday night, Peter Klemt (PK), CEO of PassportCard Australia said the company has close to 40,000 customers since relaunching some 20 months ago – roughly the same number it accrued over three years, when it was known as TravelCard, before hibernating due to the pandemic in mid-2021.
PK says the international travel insurance provider is picking up new trade partners and growing its footprint in this market. The business launched overseas in 1999 selling expat medical insurance and travel insurance. PassportCard Australia’s easy-to-use debit card functionality is viewed as a ‘game changer’ by trade partners, and serves as the major point of difference between it and other travel insurers.
“We do things a little bit different to our competitors,” PK explained to 40 VIP travel trade partners at CIRQ at Crown Sydney.
“We issue our customers with a PassportCard, which is effectively a prepaid debit card. That enables policyholders to settle claims in real time, whilst they are on trip.”
Subscribe to LATTE’s free eNewsletter to keep up to date with everything in the luxury travel industry.
The debit card can be used to pay out of pocket charges such as medical expenses, delayed luggage and stolen cash.
And while there is a physical plastic card (essential in some foreign markets), the insurer also has a digital card option. Nearly two-thirds of ‘on-trip’ claims being processed are being done digitally, via WhatsApp or web chat.
PK said that customers needing to make a claim contact PassportCard, go through a triage process and within 10 minutes the amount of money they require to handle their situation is transferred to their account, enabling the claim to be “settled on the spot”.
“Our customers have no out of pocket expenses.”
“In Australia, and we believe globally, we are the only insurance provide that handles travel claims the way we do. Plenty of companies have tried to copy it, but our five-year old US-patented technology is ever-evolving in the background to get it to where it is today.”
“We are dealing with about 1000 different insurance brokers across Australia and have just shy of 100 different partners from within the travel industry, community banks and health fund-type arrangements, PK told LATTE at the event.
“We are certainly growing exponentially in Australia and around the world,” he added.
PK said the response from the Australian trade has been encouraging “because we’re doing something different.”
“PassportCard puts the customer at the centre of the process, and we’ve designed a process that meets over 90% of our customer claims.”
PK used an example of the cost to see a GP in Manhattan, New York on a Sunday afternoon would be an outlay of around US$1,000. The PassportCard avoids a customer from drawing on their own credit card and going through the claim and reimbursement process.
The biggest claim in this region that PassportCard Australia has received, and paid out, was a $1.2 million settlement for a client who had an accident, falling from a villa’s balcony on a South Pacific island and ending up in a wheelchair.
“We engaged immediately. We provided every dimension of support you can imagine. We were able to negotiate with our reinsurers to pay the capital sum,” he said.
“We’ll do what we can to fast-track claims, and proudly, we were able to get that paid very, very quickly.”
