Manulife is saying thanks to all travel partners in a special new group video and letter to the industry, printed below.

"We wanted to say a special thank you to all our travel partners who have worked together with us over the past few months since the pandemic began.

This historic pandemic is impacting all of us in the travel business and we realize no one has been impacted more than you, the front-line agents. We have been doing our very best to keep you updated as things continue to evolve daily and will post all the important updates and bulletins on our IGO insured home page.

There are several pre-recorded and live webinars that we are hoping you can join to better understand our position on COVID-19 and more important, what products to sell in the future. During these unprecedented times, we are managing a much higher volume of claims and to date have received over 39,000 claims, with over 80% being Trip Cancellation. To put this in perspective, this represents a 90% increase from previous years.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work our way through every claim and adjudicate each on its own individual merit. We ask you pass along our appreciation to your clients as well. While the entire travel industry is on pause and we all eagerly await the day, we can freely travel again, we understand that there are still many questions around selling travel insurance moving forward. Our goal is to make sure you have the information you need to sell insurance with confidence.

The good news is that we have heard that most people who are considering travelling soon, are not just thinking about whether to purchase but feel travel insurance is a must have. We anticipate agents closing rates to dramatically increase with this new normal we are all living.

What is important to remember is that people still need travel insurance when they are either travelling within Canada and Internationally. It is important to remember that there are many other risks we cover outside of COVID-19 and Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) still applies on many of our policies.

We also know that the vast majority of travellers now understand and appreciate the value that you as their Travel Professional bring to the table when choosing you to book their trip. This is the time to ensure that you take advantage of all the training tools in our toolbox so that you are prepared to sell our products with confidence. In order to assist you with your insurance conversations, we have developed a detailed Question & Answer document that we have available for you to reference on our IGO Home page along with a great sales tool “Selling Travel Insurance Moving Forward” that will help you to educate your clients.

We encourage you to refer to IGO as often as possible to ensure you have our most up to date information and communications. Once again, our entire team is available to assist with any additional questions."