Travel Insurance Tips For Dummies

Travelling abroad needn’t fill you with worry, but it’s important to be covered just in case the worst does come along. Flight cancellation and loss of baggage or passport are some of the more trivial things that could happen while your away, but you could also find yourself in a very sticky financial situation should you or one of your group become ill or suffer an accident. Outside the EU, medical expenses won’t be covered, while even inside the EU you may need to pay for transport home or private treatment. Taking out the correct travel insurance policy can cover you against all of these misdemeanours, and give you peace of mind while you’re away. If you’re looking for the best travel insurance deal for this summer, then take a read of this article for some tips for finding the best policy. Check What You Already Have If you’re a premium customer with a bank or credit card company, then chances are that you’ll already have travel insurance included. This is particularly likely if you’re paying a monthly fee for your banking. Make sure you check this out with your bank and read the small print of the deal – it might not be valid outside of the EU or if you have special circumstances, but a phone call should clear this up. If you don’t have a policy already, then it really pays to shop around. It’s easier to do now thanks to the web – all you really need to do is key ‘travel insurance’ into a search engine, flick a few of the results and enter your requirements. Price comparison websites are particularly useful, so if you filter through a couple of these then you’ll be on the right track. Special Clauses Anyone with special conditions can get quoted ludicrously high amounts from most traditional 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.