Decent insurance that includes off-piste without an instructor

ise wrote:if you're in France then carte neige/carre neige should cover you for a small charge with the lift pass.

The remits for guides, instructors and leaders are fairly complex to an outsider but I doubt an insurer would make any headway legally as long as the person were operating within their remit regardless of the title they were using that day. I would guess an insurer that did cover off-piste without a guide would still expect the skier to take normal precautions and know what those precautions were though.

Quite, though an number of UK insurers have in their small print that the insured is only covered for off piste skiing if they are with a qualified ski instructor.
If it's not in the policy, you are not covered. It would make no sense for their customer to be obliged to engage a mountain professional without the necessary mountain guiding qualifications, in order to ski off piste yet this is exactly what their policies demand.

To me it shows that they are selling a product which they know very little about.

bandit wrote:Quite, though an number of UK insurers have in their small print that the insured is only covered for off piste skiing if they are with a qualified ski instructor.
If it's not in the policy, you are not covered. It would make no sense for their customer to be obliged to engage a mountain professional without the necessary mountain guiding qualifications, in order to ski off piste yet this is exactly what their policies demand.

To me it shows that they are selling a product which they know very little about.

Legally that probably wouldn't really stand up, if it says instructor and you took a guide that would amount to the same thing in a court. However, you clearly don't want an insurer you've got to sue to make a claim, or like you say, an insurer who appears not to know their product.

Yes I agree, it would be awful to have to fight your insurer, and recover from injury as well. I had a fairly dismal time when I last claimed, but that was because the insurer, AXA, had contracted with a claims handling agent who was in the process of becoming infamous. AXA dropped them shortly after.

Here is another classic, taken from the website of Primary Insurance today.

Wintersports
Guided cross-country skiing, mono skiing, off-piste skiing or snowboarding, recreational
racing, skiing, snow boarding and snow sledging.
Wintersports does not include:
Freestyle skiing, heli-skiing, ice hockey, luging, off-piste skiing or snowboarding in areas
designated as unsafe by resort management, off-piste skiing or snowboarding where there is
an avalanche warning in place, parapenting, ski acrobatics and stunting, ski bob racing, ski
flying, ski jumping, ski racing or training, the use of skeletons or bobsleighs, snow mobiling

My bold

It's my understanding that Avalanche Warnings are in place all season, it's the level of risk that alters by the hour/day.

Even the sentence above the one I have highlighted to me makes the clause very dodgy. How would such a designation be established, when all off piste carries an element of risk.

Again, to me this policy wording shows a lack of understanding of their product.

http://www.primaryinsurance.co.uk/policydocuments/policydocuments.html

My understanding is that Carte / Carre Neige will not repatriate you, so you may get off the mountain to a French hospital, but you'll have to make your own way home!

You might also want to consider Fogg who insure the British alpine teams, and as their website states, cover off-piste.
www.fogginsure.co.uk