Over the past few months I have completed several updates to features on Rewards Canada such as our credit card comparison charts and the guide to credit card emergency medical coverage. For these updates I reviewed the insurance documents of well over 100, perhaps even over 150 credit cards. Despite differences in the amount of coverage, length of coverage and items covered most of the policies generally read the same and operate in a similar manner to one another. That is, except for Desjardins Insurance baggage coverage which is found on cards issued by Desjardins and Collabria.
The quirk with Desjardins Baggage Insurance to be aware of
What is this quirk you may ask? Honestly, it is a mind boggling one. Desjardins imposes age and time limitations on their lost, stolen, or damaged baggage coverage. When I first came across this I had to do a double take to see if it was an error but it is not!
You read that right – Desjardins has the exact same limitations found on their out of province emergency medical coverage on their baggage insurance. To me it makes no sense at all. A person’s age or length of trip has no bearing on whether their luggage is going to be lost, stolen or damaged when in the hands of a common carrier. This is a head scratcher – is somebody who is 73 years old more likely to lose or have their luggage stolen or damaged than someone who is 43 years old? And, is it more likely for an airline to lose said luggage of the 73 year old when they return 16 days after departure instead of 15 days? Like I said, to me this makes no sense at all.
For comparison, here are examples of baggage coverage from American Express and BMO Bank of Montreal:
As you can see both of these have no age restrictions and the only time restriction is the actual duration of your trip. This is the same for all the issuers I double checked while writing this piece including CIBC, HSBC, RBC, Scotia, TD and pretty much every other one. Thus if you are 65 and have a 17 day trip you are covered with all those other cards unlike Desjardins where you would have no coverage on your return trip as that is 2 days past the 15 day limitation. Likewise, if you go travelling for three months the other cards still cover your baggage on your return whereas there wouldn’t be coverage at all for any Desjardins or Collabria cardholders
I do understand that Desjardins potentially covers lost or stolen luggage while you are on vacation/travelling (not just while in transit with a common carrier) but I still don’t get how this would be affected by a travellers age?
Which issuers use Dejardins Insurance
There are only two credit card issuers that use Desjardins for their baggage insurance coverage:
- Desjardins
- Collabria (Collabria issues many credit union cards in Canada)
Collabria is owned in part by Desjardins so it only makes sense that they use Desjardins Insurance.
Why would they do this?
Your guess is as good as mine as to why they have age and time limitations on baggage coverage. Collabria does state you can obtain extended coverage which most likely means that you have to buy additional insurance. If I were to take a guess maybe they have done this in an attempt to up sell further insurance products?
Wrapping it up
In this loyalty lesson we delved into the world of credit card insurance. While it doesn’t play a direct role in loyalty rewards, insurance coverage offered on rewards credit cards can play a big part in the card(s) that consumers choose. In this case we have several cards that impose age and time restrictions on a very common type of insurance coverage in which other issuers do not. In my estimation, baggage coverage is one of the most utilized travel insurance benefits offered on credit cards. These days it is all too common to have baggage lost or damaged or even stolen and we wanted to advise all our readers that Desjardins and Collabria issued cards impose restrictions on this coverage.