Travel Insurance is very important for every trip you take but do you know what to look for in a good travel insurance policy? Read more about these 5 most important features.
Medical Fees - Who has to pay?
When travelling overseas and need to receive medical treatment at a doctor or hospital your travel insurance won't always payout directly. Quite often you'll need to claim afterwards. Before seeing a doctor, or as soon as possible if its an emergency, contact the insurance company and tell them what is happening. They'll be able to tell you if they have a suggest medical provider and how you go about organising payment.
Ideally the insurance company will pay for your hospital or doctors costs upfront as this means you won't need to but the entire costs on your credit car or trying to organise more money from home, especially if its a high cost incident.
International Emergency Assistance - Who to call?
All travel insurance companies have a process for notifying them in case of emergency situations and how to handle them. It is best to look for a policy that offers local phone numbers that you can call in a large number of countries. This will make it easier to contact them if something goes wrong. Reverse charge numbers don't work in all countries so should be avoided if you are travelling anywhere slightly off the beaten track. Phoning back to your own country can end up being hundreds or even thousands of dollars depending which country you are in.
Always ensure you have the emergency contact information with you at all times while travelling and store a separate copy in your luggage and in an online storage or email account.
Excess
A low or no excess is very useful for comprehensive travel insurance because it allows you to claim on a wider range of items. Many policies offer an excess buyout for a fee (reduces the excess to $0). This is usually worth considering as it means that you are able to claim for anything that you are able to and will get the full amount back. If you are going for a budget or hospital only travel insurance policy the excess will be of less importance as you will likely only claim for high cost events where the excess is just a small percentage of the total amount.
Sports and adventure activity coverage
Certain adventurous sports are automatically covered by travel insurance policies, these are usually low risk sports or activities such as hiking, kayaking, and water skiing. Higher risk activities like scuba diving, bungee jumping, and mountain biking may be covered for an extra premium but some policies do cover these normally. You need to confirm directly with the insurance company if you are doing any of these sports.
Pre-existing conditions
Many of us have minor (or not so minor) medical conditions that could potentially cause problems when on holiday. Things like asthma, arthritis, allergies. Some insurance policies cover these type of things, other times they will not and some with stop you from getting the travel insurance policy. These are detailed in the PDS and you will need to contact the travel insurance company directly if you have any of the listed medical conditions.
Reviews
Reading customer reviews is very helpful as it provides an overview of the claims and assistance services that you are unable to get from reading the travel insurance PDS or from the corporate website. Make sure you take not of the ease and speed of claims and if the company tries to get out of paying claims where they can.
Jackson Taylor is employed as a writer of reviews on travel insurance. Jackson has travelled the world thoroughly and enjoys providing insight about all the things he has learnt while travelling. Read of his latest reviews on Australian Travel Insurance - Travel Insurance Direct review.
