Travel Insurance - 5 Features To Watch For

Medical Fees - Do you have to pay upfront?

When travelling overseas and need to receive medical treatment at a doctor or hospital your travel insurance doesn't always payout upfront. Quite often you'll need lodge a claim when you get home. Before seeing a doctor, or as soon as possible if its an emergency, call your insurance provider and inform them what is occurring. They'll be able to tell you if they have a recommended medical provide and what you need  to do to claim the costs back.

It is preferable to have the insurance pay for your hospital or doctors costs upfront as this saves you from putting the fees on your credit card or attempting to organise the money from friends or family, especially if its a high cost incident.

Overseas Emergency Assistance - Who to call?

All travel insurance companies have some form procedure for being notified of emergency events and how to handle them. Always look for a policy that offers local telephone numbers to call in a wide range 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 going anywhere slightly off the beaten track. Calling 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 assistance 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 small 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 often a very good idea as it means that you are able to claim on anything that you are able to and will get the full amount back. If you are going for a backpacker or medical only travel insurance policy the excess may be of less importance as you will most 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 activities are automatically covered by travel insurance policies, these are usually low risk sports or activities such as bushwalking, snorkelling, and cycling. Higher risk activities like sky diving, bungee jumping, and rock climbing may be covered for an extra premium but some policies do cover these as standard. You should confirm directly with the insurance company if you are doing any of these activities.

Pre-existing conditions

Many of us have certain medical conditions that could potentially cause problems when on holiday. Things like asthma, arthritis, allergies. Sometimes these will be covered by the insurance policy, other times they will not and some with stop you from getting the travel insurance policy. These are listed in the PDS and you should contact the travel insurance company directly if you have any pre-existing medical conditions.

Reviews

Reading customer reviews is very helpful as it provides an overview of the claims and assistance services that you can't get from reading the travel insurance PDS or from the businesses website. Make sure you take not of the ease and speed of claims and whether the company tries to get out of settling claims where ever possible.