How To Shop For Travel Insurance?

Travel insurance is the kind of guarantee that helps you when you feel stuck on foreign land to keep your finances running. While travelling, the situations are usually not in our hands and can go from bad to worse; hence it is important for you to be secured, especially, while travelling.

The situations here can be anything ranging from the loss of baggage (including passport) to falling ill in the country of travel. The most important part of buying a travel insurance policy is to decide the factors that need to be looked upon.  Let’s have a look at few major points that you must consider while buying a policy…

• Research on the place of travel: Try finding out about present and prevalent weather there. It would be great, if you could also find out most about common disease there, so that you look for the policies, which cover those diseases. To get credible health-related information, you can visit the website of Centre of Disease Control and Prevention. Information of this sort will help you in getting the right cover. For instance, most insurance policies do not cover ‘illness as result of exposure to radiation’, but if you are travelling to Japan; there are high chances of being affected by nuclear radiation. 

• Study all exclusions carefully: Most of the travel insurance policies do not have common exclusion points; hence, it becomes imperative to check them out at the time of buying a policy. Glaring examples of dissimilar exclusions are cover for terrorist activities, illness due to radiation, pollution and contamination, etc. Special consideration should be given to such aspects.

• Know political situation of the country of travel: On this, you can get credible information from the website of The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Here, you can get all the required information on likely threats and shop for a suitable policy accordingly.

• Frequent fliers policy choice: If you are a frequent visitor abroad and travel more than thrice a year, it is advisable that you buy a frequent flier policy, instead of buying separate policies every time you travel. Companies have different plans for single and multi-trip travel insurance.

In case, you buy an individual policy for 6 days for single person travelling to non-American countries from TATA AIG, you have the following choices:

If you buy a multi-trip annual policy for 356 days for single person travelling to non-American countries from TATA AIG, you have the following choices:

This means that if you are covered under the platinum plan and travel more than six times a year, you will be covered for free for every trip after that. This could be an effective cost saver plan for frequent travellers.

• Find out, if you already have travel insurance: Most of the credit cards these days, for example, come with attached travel insurances. For example, HDFC Corporate Platinum Credit Card comes with attached travel insurance with the following features.

In such case, you will have to get in touch with your bank to activate the plan and know the terms and conditions attached to it. Usually, there is a fixed a minimum threshold limit for usage of card to give you the insurance benefit provided with. In these cases, you are not insured by the bank but by the insurer, which has tie-up with your bank.

• Know attached policies available: When you are buying a travel insurance policy, shop around to see what other policies such as home and content insurance are available with it in terms of added benefits. For instance, ICICI Lombard Travel Insurance has additional benefits of Home and content Insurance in it. Here, a basic policy for travel insurance, for a single person travel to non-American countries for six days, comes at Rs 877. An additional amount in it, gives your home the required cover while you are away.

• Go in for family policies, if travelling together: Family policies are cheaper and cover everyone. However, while buying one, you have to be careful about two things — the maximum number of family members covered and maximum age of eldest family member eligible.

• Look for ‘cancel for any reason clause’: Check whether your policy covers your losses if you cancel the policy for any reason. In most cases, if you cancel your trip at the last minute, you would be covered against your expenses for almost 80 per cent of the value.

• Compare prices and search online: Compare the prices and features online before zeroing in on a policy. We generally buy the policies pushed by travel agents, but they have standard covers with no additional features and may also prove expensive. An online comparison gives you an opportunity to get your plan customized, according to your requirements, and also gives you a glimpse of what other companies are offering.

No matter what kind of trip you are preparing, you would always want to minimize your risks attached. An easiest way to achieve this is to buy travel insurance that suits you best and enjoy your trip to the fullest.