Travel Insurance Tips For Dummies

Travelling abroad neednt fill you with worry, but its 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 wont 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 youre away. If youre 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 youre a premium customer with a bank or credit card company, then chances are that youll already have travel insurance included. This is particularly likely if youre 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 dont have a policy already, then it really pays to shop around. Its 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 youll 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 its then your call on the risks of going abroad with limited cover. Also, the EHIC card wont cover you for everything. In fact, it will only give you as much medical cover as a local citizen in your destination country it wont cover you for luggage loss or plane ticket cancellation.

Dont Over Cover
When searching for a policy, its important to understand what kind of cover you need. If you just take the first policy you find, youre 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 dont really need it. For instance, do you really need 50 million worth of medical insurance cover? The answer is almost certainly not. In fact, its 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.