A variety of aspects can affect the cost of your travel insurance cover.
Things like your age and health, for example, are those which you can’t really do a lot about, whereas factors such as where you choose to go on vacation and what kind of activities you’re going to be doing there are those that you do have some control over, and can therefore be changed if you want to limit your insurance costs.
Read on for the key factors that are likely to have an impact on your travel insurance premium:
1. Age
Quite simply, the older you are, the more likely it is that you’re going to be charged a higher premium. It does, however, pay to compare premiums and insurers to make sure you’re getting the best deal out there.
2. Health
If you suffer from any pre-existing medical conditions, it’s absolutely vital that you declare it when gathering your insurance quotes. Fail to do so, and you could find that if the worst happened and you fell ill on vacation, you could see your insurance cover completely voided and all lines of financial and medical help closed off. Cover for the medical condition can either be included or excluded in your cover, but either way, your insurer must know about it.
3. Destination
Most insurers divide the globe into four principal areas: your home country, USA, Europe and rest of the world or ‘ROW’, which, of course, becomes three areas if your home country is the US. These four areas are then each divided into subsectors thereafter. It’s always less expensive to travel within your home country, simply because you’re already entitled to medical treatment there.
Travelling further afield means that you won’t be entitled to healthcare in that foreign country, and seeing as though medical treatment can be extremely costly, this is where you would start seeing an increase in your insurance premium. Similarly, countries considered to be riskier than others will carry a higher premium because you’re more likely to be injured or even killed, and can be due to anything from political unrest to risk of natural disaster.
4. Length of vacation
Most insurers offer cover based on trip length, so you might find that reducing your vacation by a day or two might just help you fall back into a less expensive price bracket.
5. Annual multitrip insurance
For those of you who travel two or more times a year, purchasing an annual policy is often only a few dollars more than a policy for two weeks, so again, shop around to find a good annual multitrip deal.
6. Level of Cover
It’s always recommended that travellers take out the highest level of cover available to them – there’s no point in taking out insurance if it’s just going to be token cover – make sure you’re covered comprehensively for every eventuality, and that the level of medical cover is sufficient. That’s not to say, though, that you should over cover either.
If you’ve got a level of cover with insurance to partake in extreme sports activities and have no intention of doing so whatsoever, then obviously you’ve overspent.
7. Excess
This is another simple rule – the higher the deductible amount you agree to pay in case of loss, damage or injury, the lower your insurance premium will be.
All in all, there’s not too much you can do to reduce your cover if you’ve already bought your plane tickets.
However, if you don’t know where you’re going yet and want to bring down the cost of a potential holiday, then your travel insurance insurance could be a good thing to look into and save yourself some spending money.
