Research by Moneysupermarket.com has found over 60% of Britons opt out of getting travel insurance cover when they go abroad, while 8% confess to never taking out cover: that’s a considerable amount of people jetting off on holiday without cover! If yourself or one of your group fell ill while you’re away then it’s not ideal, but consider how you’d feel if you had to fit the bill. Travel insurance is there to give you and your party pece of mind, not to add to holiday-hassle. Travel insurance shouldn’t be considered as an added extra, rather it’s an essential to your trip that you shouldn’t do without. If you’re on the lookout for travel insurance, then take a read of this article to find out more.
Check What Cover You Already Have
Before venturing into the travel insurance market and spend time finding the right package for you, make sure you check bank accounts and credit cards to see if they already offer you cover. Many credit card and bank account providers have benefits for premier’ customers, and it’s possible that you may already be one of these and therefore already have a policy. If you’re not sure, then call your bank to find out what they can offer. Paying a monthly fee for having a premium account is unlikely to be worth it in the long run, but it’s possible you could upgrade for free if you’re a particularly good customer and the bank wants to give you incentive to stay on. If you can get one of these deals, then great, but also make sure your holiday destination is covered.
Special Clauses
Anyone with special conditions can get quoted ludicrously high amounts from most reliable and old-fashioned insurers. People with histories of serious illness or disability, and those who are pregnant or over sixty-five can all find themselves struggling to justify the cover price. Make sure you have an EHIC card (when travelling within Europe) and check out specialist insurers that may be able to give you a better deal. If you find the cover to still be unaffordable, then the price may drop if you ask the insurer to exclude pre-existing conditions; though it’s then your call on the risks of going abroad with limited cover. Also, the EHIC card won’t cover you for everything. In fact, it will only give you as much medical cover as a local citizen in your destination country it won’t cover you for luggage loss or plane ticket cancellation.
Don’t Over Cover
When searching for a policy, it’s important to understand what kind of cover you need. If you just take the first policy you find, you’re likely to either be substantially over insuring yourself, or perhaps even under insuring. Be particularly wary of premium insurance deals offering extremely high amounts of cover when you don’t really need it. For instance, do you really need 50 million worth of medical insurance cover? The answer is almost certainly not. In fact, it’s probably best to go for something more towards the 2 million mark for maximum medical expenses cover, while you should go towards 1 million for personal liability. Flight cancellation is also worth considering too no one wants to be in the nightmare scenario of not being able to go on holiday for whatever reason, but then having to stump up for it anyway.