Tags
buying travel insurance
Travel Insurance Buying Tips
We are all quite vulnerable when we travel because it usually means venturing out of our comfort-zones, and travel insurance is the only way to shield ourselves against monetary losses when things do go wrong. So here are some very useful tips to ensure you buy the right travel insurance that will protect you against such expected financial losses.
The most important thing to remember with travel insurance is that you are effectively buying an agreement, so always READ THE FINE PRINT, especially the exclusions at a coverage level and the general exclusions. They are written in legal jargon, so be sure to seek clarification on anything that you don’t understand.
All Insurance companies are classified as financial institutions and are consequently regulated by the government organizations like the Financial Services Authority in the UK. So be sure to check this.
One of the major risks is trip cancellation, so ensure you buy the travel insurance as soon as your trip is confirmed, even if you are not traveling for months. It’s not going to cost you anymore and your cover kicks in as soon as you purchase the trip insurance.
Buying Travel Insurance?
Travel insurance is not normally top of the priority list when planning holidays but it should be. Tour companies know that, and that’s why they normally insist travellers have insurance. Travel insurance typically covers cancellation and curtailment, personal liability, personal possessions, injury & illness and emergency assistance.
The most significant insured risk is the medical one. If you have a serious medical emergency whilst abroad, valid travel insurance could literally be the difference between life & death, and will cover the assistance costs – an air ambulance back to the UK from the East Coast of the USA could set you back £50,000 otherwise. Without travel insurance and faced with an emergency, your only option would be to contact the nearest UK consulate or embassy who will no doubt help as best they can, but will not pay for assistance.
Like most things in life you tend to get what you pay for with travel insurance, and the low cost options sometimes have limitations. Apart from the specifics of the cover, the variables that determine the price are the number of days and geography covered, the number of people on the policy and their age.