Important Issues When Purchasing an Annual Travel Insurance

Any frequent traveler can tell about the risk involved in traveling frequently. Purchasing a travel insurance for every trip is a wastage of time, money and effort. If you are frequent traveler, purchasing an annual travel insurance plan will work out lot more cheaper and provide coverage for a lot of emergency costs. There are lots of benefits of buying annual travel insurance. It avoids the frequent purchase of single trip insurances. If you are going for a quick trip over the border, then you may not get time to purchase an insurance. Few important issues should be noted when purchasing annual travel insurance are given in the subsequent paragraphs.

Existing policies. Check your existing insurances like home insurance, life insurance, health insurance, auto insurance and credit card coverage. You may be already covered for a lot of costs. So you have to buy only the remaining costs.

Coverage. The following must be covered, trip interruption insurance, trip cancellation insurance, trip delay insurance, baggage loss or delay insurance, international travel medical insurance, medical evacuation, repatriation of mortal remains, accidental death or dismemberment etc. Also check the types of flights, cruise or train cancellations covered by the policy.

Expiration date. It is prudent to check the expiration dates or policy period specified in the policy. Most policies expire on return from the trip.

Exclusion. This is very important. Read what are the exclusions in the policy. Generally hazardous sports, driving in foreign countries, pre-existing medical conditions, suicide, hijacks etc are not covered by policies.

Deductions and Coinsurance. The deductions and co-insurance have to be paid by the insured when claiming a cost covered by an insurance. For example if your travel insurance policy has 100$ deduction and 20% co-insurance, then if you visit a doctor and the treatment cost comes to 250$ then you will have to pay 130$ and the rest 120$ will be paid by the travel insurance company.

By Oliver Turner