If you’re like many people, you really ought to be buying travel insurance and immediately covering yourself in a nice cosy mental security blanket. It generally goes something like this: “If something goes wrong before or during my trip, I’ll be refunded.”
Well, it’s not quite that simple. Like all types of insurance – homeowners, commercial, life, motor to name a few – there are limits to the coverage offered in travel insurance plans.
As an insurance broker, offering a variety of plans from many of the top insurers in the market, we pride ourselves in offering you the most appropriate policy ensuring maximum value and maximum protection. In the case of travel insurance—we’ve seen the benefits of this approach enjoyed by our customers since we've been operating.
Frankly, our customers satisfaction with their policy is our top priority, so we feel an important responsibility to help educate you about travel insurance plans.
It's all in the underwriting.
When you look at your plan document or policy, the first thing you’ll want to do is review the list of benefits and corresponding limits. The two next most important parts of any policy are the covers and exclusions.
Putting this in a real-life scenario, for a typical trip cancellation plan, the “covered reasons” section will specify exactly what events would be covered by a plan in the event of a cancellation. A cancellation for medical reasons for instance.
Particularly, most of the travel insurance policy insures for the benefits of Trip Cancellation, Trip Interruption, Travel Delay, and Missed Connection.
If there’s a scenario that falls outside that list (and there will be because there are probably infinite unexpected events you might encounter), you probably won’t be covered for that scenario.
Covered reasons generally include illness or death of you, a travel companion (as defined in your plan) or an immediate family member, natural disaster or inclement weather preventing your travel from home or to your destination, or mechanical breakdown of a common carrier (like an airplane, train or cruise ship).
Other covered reasons that may be included requirement to serve as a witness in court, certain work reasons, strike, terrorist attack and other very rare but real instances.
Industry Guidelines
If you start to compare a lot of travel insurance policies, you’ll see that many look alike.
The list of benefits may be a little longer or shorter on some, and the benefit limits will vary. Additionally, some may be more robust in their list of “covered reasons” or “plan exclusions.” But the overall plan structure may look similar. This is because the insurance industry is very highly regulated.
The devil is in the details – nuances found in terms and conditions, varying timeframes applicable to certain benefits, and specific plan definitions can be the differences that make some plans much stronger than others.
Speak to the experts.
By experts, we mean us. No, we might not know what the best itineraries are, but we sure know how to make sure you're protected whichever one you choose.
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