5 Travel Insurance Facts That You Just Can’t Ignore

While life insurance, health insurance and motor insurance take the driving seat in most of our insurance portfolio, travel insurance remains ignored. Yet, travel insurance remains one of the most important protections that one must get.

Most life and health insurance do not offer travel insurance included within the policy, though might have been thinking that. In fact, most such policies fail to cover emergency evacuation, trip cancellation cover, loss of baggage, repatriation costs or natural calamities cover.

The truth is, whenever you’re travelling you have been assuming all your risks, including loss of baggage, theft, accidents, injuries or even worse. In such cases, travel insurance takes up the mantle to look after you, as it’s specifically geared to helping you on your adventures.

But, even if you didn’t know all these, you will now. So, here are 5 travel insurance facts you should know.

Health insurance might not have travel insurance included
Most people think that they are covered while travelling, thanks to their health insurance. However, that’s not true in most of the cases. Health insurance mostly deals with hospitalisations and expenses ancillary to hospitalisation.

While there are a few add-ons which provide benefit for people travelling, they usually come at a high premium. Additionally, they do not cover theloss of baggage, ticket cancellation cover, cover against natural calamities or even repatriation of remains in case a loved one dies away from home (which can be quite costly).

Don’t pester over the cost
Like most other types of insurance, it’s not really worthwhile haggling over your premium. Insurance by nature is a kind of financial protection. It’s there to protect you in a worst-case scenario. It is recommended that you compare various insurance providers, but try not to go for the least expensive one.

Most all-inclusive policies that cover a wide range of eventualities will figure at the higher end of the price spectrum, but it still remains affordable.

Pre-existing medical condition
While choosing your insurance, remember to verify your pre-existing medical conditions against those covered by the insurance. Most insurance policies have a list of pre-existing conditions that are covered and their respective timeline, in addition to those conditions which aren’t covered.

Too adventurous is not always good
Even though the purpose of travel insurance is to ensure financial protection, there are certain cases which travel insurance does not cover. For example, risky adventurers like bungee jumping, cliff diving, skydiving among others, are not covered since these events represent a high-risk scenario for the insured. As a result, insurance companies tend to avoid covering any injuries or loss arising from such incidents.

Read the fine print
Every insurance policy has its own list of inclusions and exclusions. It’s vital that before such policies, customers go through the detailed list to ensure there aren’t any conflicts. The list of inclusion details is conditions and situations that are covered by the policy while the exclusion list detailed incidents that are outside the scope of coverage.

Similarly, the terms and conditions of the policy should also be read since it details scenario, eventualities and responsibilities of the insured and the provider.