Ok, I’ve had few insurances, but mostly small Polish companies. I used ‘insurance vending machine’ at one airport once, but luckily, I didn’t need to test it. I want to up my game in that department - I’d like to ask you, fellow Monzonauts, what insurance companies you used and what was the experience?
I’m looking for insurance for 2 weeks in Morocco and 4 weeks Vietnam/Cambodia, I checked some aggregated search sites, but price range is ridiculous from £48 to £158 for example, and reviews are not helping (most expensive insurance is 3/5, but 3rd cheapest is 5/5 ).
With Revolut launching premium for £6.99/mo with ‘some’ insurance, might be worth recapping on those prices.
Thanks Tommy, but that’s exactly what I did initially and this didn’t help me at all. I was asking about real experiences, great companies that never let someone down. Effectively, paying £10 more or less is nothing, if they can sort you out with doctor in decent time. I think I’m looking for Monzo-equivalent for travel insurance, if that makes sense.
Fair enough. I expect there’s no such equivalent and very little difference in what you actually get. Pretty much all companies are just resellers for a big few companies and they all more or less use the same providers in the destination countries.
I found Tesco were great when handling claim from abroad under our travel policy. As for household Hiscox are excelent. LV seem one of the best for motor insurance, Aviva for life insurance.
I currently use Columbus Direct for an annual policy with no limits on no of individual trips and each trip limited to 45 days max. As a 70+ bloke I find I have to research options carefully each renewal. The policies “free” with bank accounts are normally too restrictive as to age., medical conditions and length of trip.
In a different context, I’ve mentioned Nationwide’s FlexPlus account before - this is what I currently use for quite a comprehensive package including mobile phone, breakdown and travel insurance.
There can be a massive difference with travel insurance. The one with the cheapest headline price may have masses of exclusions. You’re always best off checking exactly what is covered and making sure it suits your needs. There’s also how good companies are at acting when you need to make a claim - will they move heaven and earth to help you, or will the argue over the small print and try and avoid doing anything if they can find a reason to exclude it? That’s why price comparison sites should be seen as a starting point rather than the only thing, so OP is doing exactly the right thing by asking for advice from people with experience.
There’s little worse than buying the best-priced insurance only to break your leg while you’re on a skiing holiday and find you’re not actually covered because the policy excludes ‘extreme’ sports (or indeed, any sports). And as Birddog mentions in another reply, age is another factor and again you could end up finding that the cheapest policy doesn’t actually cover you.
Like @Mikeee i use a bank accounts insurance. I have the Halifax ultimate reward current account. Provides family worldwide travel insurance. Haven’t claimed on it yet but Its provided by axa i believe.
We (Cuvva) have been considering potentially offering travel insurance. What sort of things would you particularly want from a travel insurance provider? We figure it’d probably be useful if you could adapt the level/type of cover pretty flexibly, e.g. if you decided to go skiing when you weren’t previously planning that.
With booking flights it is almost impossible with Ryanair or Easyjet to book tickets for say 4 people in one direction and 2 in the other or 1 out and 3 back, or take two bags on the way there and one on the return. With your insurance flexibility would be a big plus as long as it does impact on the premium. For example on a 2 week holiday cover X amount of belongings on journey there and Y amount in the way back. Or if travelling to various countries including USA have varying levels of cover for each country you visit rather than just apply a higher level suitable to the US to the whole trip.
If providing annual policies as well as per trip perhaps give those long term loyal customers the benefit of a franchise instead of an excess.
In case you unsure what that means…
Say there is an excess of £100 if you have a loss of £90 you get nothing but if you have a loss of £110 you have a claim for £10…as an excess means you only claim the sum above that excess
Say there is a franchise of £100 if you have a loss of £90 you get nothing but if you have a loss of £110 you have a claim for £110…as a franchise acts as a deterant to small claims but if there is a larger valid claim they get the full amount
I’m mostly interested in medical insurance part of the. If I could get cheap, but good health insurance, I’d happily skip ‘gadgets cover’ or ‘flight delayed’ fluff. I basically feel the strong need to take care of my bursting appendix and broken leg, rather than hope that my flight is delayed so I can claim some money. Very few insurances seem to offer such package, it’s always packed with other stuff (funeral cover? Perfect thing to think about when planning holidays! Loss of limb? No, thank you, but do I need it covered?).
I’m not saying having phone stolen doesn’t happen, but I often take nearly dead spare anyway, so I’m not interested in paying this tiny part of insurance for it.
Having had a delay to the airport mean our family miss our flight I can assure you having cover for missed flights is essential as not all of us can afford to buy a new second set of air tickets
The main thing is definately medical and you need seriously higher levels of cover for trips to the US. But I would also consider medical evacuation when a serious accident so coverholders can be medivac’ed back to the UK/EU for hospital treatment if in certain regions of the world.
Extreme sports will be covered if you check the box saying “include extreme sports”. Age won’t be an issue as a comparison site will check your age before making you any offers! Comparison sites aim to find out your exact usage case before offering you prices.
And I get that people will want to hear about other’s experience but that’s the problem with travel insurance, it’s used rarely enough that I doubt anyone will have claimed on it often enough to have actually built up a decent evidence-base on any particular provider, therefore any feedback from individuals on here is purely anecdotal. It’s much like trying to discuss bank or mobile network with a group of people, each individual will have horror stories of how one or other is unusable whilst someone else will have been using them for years absolutely fine.
The only real way to know if an insurance provider is any good is to compare their TrustPilot/Feefo/Defaqto scores, although reading reviews of stuff like insurance is only going to provide even more horror stories as people only feed back on this sort of stuff when they’ve had bad experiences.
I want to up my game in that department - I’d like to ask you, fellow Monzonauts, what insurance companies you used and what was the experience?
).
Loss of limb? No, thank you, but do I need it covered?).