A Complete Guide to Choosing the Best Travel Insurance

Traveling the world is a dream for many of us. These days, people are much aware of the benefits of buying travel insurance that best suits the trip. The policy provides a safety net while you are traveling away from your home country or within its geographical span. As per stats, the Indian travel insurance market is also growing at a fast pace. If you travel a lot for personal or business-related needs, you must know the importance of travel insurance. That said, you may struggle in selecting the best travel insurance policy, given the availability of a wide variety of plans from different insurance companies.

Here is a comprehensive travel insurance guide to help you buy the most suitable policy:

1. Buy Travel Insurance Online

A significant advantage of buying travel insurance online is the ease of comparing different policies. For instance, you can check the differences in the premium of policies offered by different insurers, their policy terms and wordings online. Instead of blindly following peer recommendations, do cross-check if the policy you want to buy is apt to keep you secure while you travel to distant destinations. This comparison might not be possible if you’re buying a travel insurance policy offline.

2. Identify Your Needs

The next step is to ascertain your specific requirements for which you want to buy travel insurance. For instance, the medical coverage under travel insurance must be an essential component of a travel insurance plan bought for senior citizens. It is because they are at higher risk of suffering from health problems when travelling abroad. You need to check the coverage limit and select one accordingly.

Doing this will ensure that you will only pay for the insurance benefits you need. One way to identify specific needs is to consider two main parameters – the destination of your travel plan and the purpose.

3. Understand Coverage Limits

Many travelers wrongly assume the assured sum to be the only factor that they need to consider while buying a travel insurance policy. Alongside this, it is also crucial to understand the specific pre-defined limits of the policy. For example, if you buy a policy with sum assured of five lakh rupees and baggage cover of just fifty thousand rupees, the insurance benefit in case of loss of baggage will be limited to just fifty thousand rupees. You need to choose a policy with a higher baggage cover, particularly when your luggage is worth more than that.

To ensure hassle-free claim settlement, check the policy wordings in detail and understand these limits.

4. Watch for Exclusion Terms

All travel insurance policies have some exclusion terms which define the situations wherein the policy won’t work. For an adventure trip, many risky outdoor activities such as bungee jumping or skydiving are not covered in the basic travel insurance plan. If the sole purpose of travelling is to enjoy adventurous activities abroad, you must ask your insurer about the possibility of availing coverage for adventure sports.

5. Check the Insurer’s Reputation

Other than the terms and conditions of a travel insurance policy, the insurer you choose also matters a lot. The reputation of an insurance company in the market tells you a lot about the experience of the policyholders. Whether you want to buy travel insurance for Singapore for a leisure trip or the USA for a business trip, make sure you buy the policy from a renowned insurer like Tata AIG. The right choice of the insurer is a crucial step towards eliminating any hassles that may occur during claim settlement.

Think of travel insurance as an all-purpose coverage for emergencies that may occur while traveling. If you are a frequent traveler to foreign destinations, never travel with a robust travel insurance policy.