One of the bonuses I include with my home study course is a Special Report on selling travel insurance.

In that report, I concentrate on the financial and legal reasons for selling travel insurance and, while I don’t have the time or inclination to repeat all that here, suffice it to say that travel insurance is easy to sell, it protects both you and the client, and it has perhaps the highest commissions of any travel product.

But there are other reasons for selling travel insurance, as I discovered yesterday.

A friend and client had gone to Europe and was due back on the 12th. When I hadn’t heard from him by the 15th, I called his cell phone. I reached him in a hospital in Madrid, Spain.

He had suffered a mild heart attack on the first leg of his return journey and when the plane landed in Madrid, he was whisked to the nearest hospital.

Before he left, we had a heart to heart about travel insurance. My friend is what’s known as a “self-insurer.” In other words, he figures that he can afford the slight risk of lost luggage or trip cancellation.

That’s fine. If a client feels he can afford to lose several thousand dollars if he has to cancel, I’m not going to argue too strenuously. I just present the options and have him sign the waiver if he declines and move on.

But I encouraged my friend to consider the wisdom of medical evacuation insurance that would look after him in the case of illness or accident and, more important, pay to bring him home.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation you are looking a far more than the cost of a suitcase full of dirty clothes. The costs can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars, just for an air ambulance.

I pointed out that we were both of an age when our immortality is looking like less and less of a sure thing. Thankfully, I was persuasive enough that he took out a solid policy that is now giving him the peace of mind he wouldn’t have had otherwise. Instead of fretting about how he’s going to pay for all this, he can concentrate on getting better.

When I got off the phone with my friend (who has a brand new Spanish stent and is on the mend!), I reflected that selling travel insurance can be about saving lives. And that is far more important than making a few extra dollars.