Gold Travel Insurance
Most insurers provide at least three levels of travel insurance policy, normally labelled bronze, silver and gold. These three products pretty much equate to budget, standard and premium grade protection. What normally happens is that the insurance providers will advertise the ‘bronze’ price and then try and encourage you to buy the ‘gold’ policy instead. So do you really need gold plated travel insurance?
The answer is probably not. One way of padding out an insurance cover is with the medical insurance cover. To buy travel insurance in the UK you need to be a UK resident and this means that as long as you carry your EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) most of your medical expenses should you fall ill in Europe would by covered by the EEA reciprocal agreement. this allows insurers to offer millions of pounds worth of medical cover knowing full well that they will almost never have to pay out the full amount. Although a medical repatriation maybe expensive, running to up to quarter of a million pounds, this is nothing to the five, ten or fifteen million pounds of medical cover that premium travel insurance offers.
Getting Drunk Invalidates Your Travel Insurance
Another way of adding value easily to a gold policy is the offer millions of pounds worth of personal liability cover. It logic is quite simple, the more responsible a person you are the more likely you are to buy a premium policy and the less likely you are to be the cause of an accident that injures somebody else. The number one cause of personal liability claims is being drunk and in that situation your holiday insurance is invalid. The same is true if you injure yourself. If you need to go to hospital and your blood test results show high levels of alcohol then your holiday insurance may well not cover your medical expenses.
So if the gold travel insurance policies are stuffed with stuff you don’t need, what are they for?
Well, a gold quality travel insurance policy comes with more cancellation and curtailment cover than any other class of policy. You get more baggage allowance than any other policy and more added extra extras. The most important factor is that if you are taking a more expensive holiday, your travel cover must cover the cost of your holiday and this is the domain of the gold or premium policy.
What If I Am Not Taking A Really Expensive Holiday? (more…)