Ad description
A TV ad for Staysure Travel Insurance, seen on 9 August 2025, featured a holiday destination, and showed older couples on holiday, eating local cuisine, boating, swimming, trekking and surfing. Alongside that, the voiceover stated, “You can count on Staysure, the UK’s favourite travel insurance provider. We specialise in cover for over 50s with pre-existing medical conditions, and there’s no age limit.” At that point, small on-screen text appeared at the bottom of the screen and stated “Terms and exclusions apply”.
The voiceover then stated, “Whether you’re planning an epic, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, or revisiting your favourite holiday spot one more time, we offer cover for single or multiple trips throughout the year. Staysure Travel Insurance, the UK’s favourite. Get your quote online or call us today. Sale now on.”
At the end of the ad, on-screen text stated “Staysure The UK’s favourite 20% OFF Quote TV20 Rated Excellent on [star] Trustpilot”. Small text at the bottom of the screen stated “Ends 31/08/25. Excludes costs to cover medical conditions & add-ons. New policies only. T&Cs apply”.
Issue
The complainant, who was only offered travel insurance for a limited number of days per year when they reached the age of 76, challenged whether the claim “there’s no age limit” was misleading.
Response
Howserv Ltd t/a Staysure Travel Insurance believed that the claim “there’s no age limit” was not materially misleading, nor likely to mislead their customers because, there was no maximum age limit to purchase travel insurance with Staysure.
Staysure confirmed that trip duration periods, in other words, how long you could travel with insurance coverage, did decrease as your age increased, as the complainant had outlined. However, they maintained that the claim ”no age limit” was factually correct as customers of any age could obtain travel insurance cover for up to 104 days of travel (Single Trip) or up to 35 days for any one trip (183 days in total) for Annual Multi-Trip policies (AMT). They also clarified that to purchase the policy you must be 18 years of age or older, however, all customers below this age could be covered as a traveller on the policy.
They highlighted that when the voice-over stated, “there’s no age limit”, it was accompanied by on-screen text which stated “Terms and exclusions apply”. Therefore, they did not believe the ad omitted material information. They also said that consumers were informed of this restriction later in the consumer journey. They explained that consumers were informed by their call centre agents of cover trip limits for offline sales and that customers purchasing online were also able to view trip limits in “help text” when they received their online quote and purchased insurance. Online customers were also provided with policy documentation before purchase and IPIDS (Insurance Product Information Document) and Policy Documents after purchase, all of which contained the maximum trip duration details for each age bracket.
In response to receiving the complaint, Staysure Travel Insurance said they had reviewed their response on the website to the Frequently Asked Question “Are there any age limits to buying a policy?” and had concluded that the answer could be improved to better support consumer understanding. Subsequently, they updated the answer to state “Customers over the age of 18 can purchase a single trip or annual multi-trip policy and there is no maximum age limit. There is therefore no age limit. Please note that max trip durations apply and vary dependent on age. Please read your policy documentation for further information”. They stated that a “long stay policy” was nothing more than a “single trip policy”. They said that there was no difference in cover or in Terms and Conditions. It fell under Single Trip in the sales journey, and was recorded on a customer’s validation certificate as a Single Trip. They said that they had therefore removed the reference to “long stay policy”.
Clearcast stated that, when assessing the ad, they asked for substantiation for the claim “there’s no age limit”. They received confirmation from Staysure Travel Insurance that they did not refuse travel insurance to any customer on the grounds of age alone and did not impose any upper age limits on insurance. They were provided with a Staysure Travel Insurance quote for a traveller aged 101 which showed that they were still eligible for insurance.
Clearcast said that the complainant accepted that they were still offered travel insurance, albeit not for the same number of days as they previously had been. They said that the complainant may have felt that what they were offered was more limited than they would have liked, but they were ultimately still offered insurance. They reiterated that the complainant was not refused insurance because of their age and therefore they believed the claim “there’s no age limit” was not misleading.
Clearcast said that insurance was a product where the individual circumstances of any applicant must be taken into account, and the policy Staysure was able to offer and the terms they placed upon that policy, depended on those individual circumstances. They believed that a reasonable viewer would be aware that insurance would be based on specific circumstances, including age. They said that this awareness, alongside the legal disclaimer used in the ad “Terms and exclusions apply”, was sufficient to qualify the claim and to alert viewers to the fact that they would need to apply for insurance and provide full details to see exactly what policies and terms were available to them, including trip durations. They said that this information was communicated to customers fully before purchase.
Clearcast were satisfied that they had received adequate substantiation from Staysure that the claim was not likely to mislead, and that it was suitably qualified for the reasonable viewer, with no material information omitted.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad described Staysure as specialising in travel insurance cover for over-50s, featured the claim “there’s no age limit”, and included clips of older people enjoying holidays in various worldwide destinations. The ad also promoted cover for both “single or multiple trips throughout the year”. Within that context, the ASA considered that viewers would understand the claim “there’s no age limit” to mean that an applicant’s age would not place limits on the availability or extent of their coverage. In particular, we considered viewers would expect that those who were older would be able to obtain cover on materially similar terms to younger consumers.
We acknowledged that there was no upper limit to purchasing an insurance policy with Staysure, and that customers of any age could obtain cover. However, the extent of that insurance cover varied by age. We understood that the length of trip durations reduced with age; for example, under-65s could travel for up to 18 months worldwide, those aged 66–70 could travel for up to 12 months in Europe (six months to some destinations and nine months elsewhere), and those aged 71–75 could travel for up to 12 months in Europe (four months to some destinations and six months elsewhere). We further understood that customers over 75 could not obtain long-stay cover and would not be insured for trips longer than three months.
We considered those were significant limitations that applied because of the age of the applicant. We also considered that the qualification “Terms and exclusions apply”, shown in small on-screen text when the voice-over stated “there’s no age limit”, did not explain the nature or extent of the age-related restrictions and contradicted, rather than clarified, the absolute claim “there’s no age limit”.
Because the ad implied that there were no age-related limits on the availability or extent of cover, when that was not the case, and because the ad did not make clear the nature or extent of those restrictions, we concluded that the ad was misleading.
The ad breached BCAP Code rules 3.1 (Misleading Advertising) and 3.10 (Qualification).
Action
The ad should not appear again in the current form. We told Howserv Ltd t/a Staysure Travel Insurance not to mislead consumers by claiming that there was “no age limit” to their holiday insurance. We told them to ensure that their qualifications did not contradict the claim they qualified.
