Check Your Travel Insurance

If you're going on an 'independent' holiday, make sure that your policy covers all the activities you might do.

Picture the scene: I'm alone in a remote South African hospital wired up to a drip. I've been given injections and various medication and the doctors are doing a second test to see if I have malaria. Using what's left of my fast-depleting energy supplies I fish my travel insurance policy out of my rucksack and wonder `Am I covered for this?'

Travel insurance was the last thing I was thinking of when three weeks earlier I'd grabbed my backpack, slammed the front door behind me and hopped on a plane to Cape Town for a month of sun, fun and adventure. After all, I was a single woman backpacking around a  partially third-world country which plays host to a collection of killer animals and deadly diseases; what could possibly go wrong?

I hadn't completely forgotten about travel insurance of course. It's included with my Natwest Advantage Gold current account -- covered in The Classic Current Account Con -- so I'd taken the precaution of taking the policy documents with me and emailed myself the policy number and emergency numbers just in case

What I hadn't done was read the policy to check what I was covered for. Once in South Africa I threw caution to the wind and when I wasn't teasing crocodiles I was sand-boarding, climbing mountains, mountain biking, or on a camping safari in blissful ignorance of whether Natwest would pay up in the event of a mishap.

Potential exposure

According to AXA, growing numbers of `independent' holidaymakers are leaving themselves potentially exposed by buying a standard travel insurance product. And over the last few years the number of people making their own arrangements rather than buying a package holiday has increased with independents now outnumbering package holidaymakers -- in the summer of 2006 more than 9 million people travelled independently.

However, insurance provision has not kept pace with the changing profile of the British holidaymaker and independent travellers can find that there are gaps in their insurance cover - such as problems with flight cancellations or delays, missed connections or the customer being denied boarding.  

Luckily none of these problems applied to me but I do have a taste for adventure and it's easy to forget about insurance when faced with a choice of exciting activities to try. Had I decided to do a bungee jump and not told my insurer beforehand I wouldn't have been covered for any mishaps, for example.

I'm not alone in not bothering to check my insurance policy before participating in some kind of daredevil activity. According to esure a third of travellers don't check their travel insurance documents before taking part in a hazardous sport or activity and worryingly 15% admitted that they would go ahead and make a booking even if they knew the activity wasn't covered under their travel insurance.

Esure also discovered that 88% of British holidaymakers having previously taken part in these types of adventurous activities whilst on holiday, of which more than 2.8 million (8%) incurred an injury in the process.

Wherever you go on holiday and whatever you get up to it's a good idea to spend five minutes reading the smallprint of your travel insurance policy before you set off. Experts generally recommend being covered for £2 million medical expenses, £1m personal liability, £3,000 cancellation cover and £1,500 baggage cover.

EHIC

The EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) is also handy if you're travelling in Europe. The card entitles the holder to free or reduced cost essential medical treatment in all EU countries. Some insurers - such as Sainsbury's - will waive your excess fee for medical and repatriation claims if you hold an EHIC.

Travel insurance policies can be purchased for individual trips or as an annual multi-trip policy for all trips taken in the year of insurance. If you go away a couple of times a year, an annual policy is best.

However many limit the length of each trip so you might need to get an `extended stay' policy if you have a holiday longer than 31 days, or pay for an add-on to your annual policy.

Obviously I lived to tell the tale of what turned out to be a nasty case of food poisoning and a quick read of my travel insurance policy confirmed my insurance would have covered my hospital visit although it wasn't worth making a claim as the policy excess was bigger than my hospital bill. 

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