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When planning one’s financial life, most financial planning clients have serious as well as fun life goals, the serious goals being educating the children, providing for their marriages, buying a property and planning one’s own retirement, and the fun goals being taking family holidays, buying a new car every few years, and so on.

If you want to plan a pleasant surprise for your family, one of the best ways to do this would be to plan an international family holiday. If you really want it to be memorable then you should ideally plan for it well in advance, however, unfortunately, sometimes even well planned holidays can hit road-bumps because of unforeseen events.

Things such as flight delay, loss of passport, loss of checked baggage, delay of checked baggage and also more serious situations including emergency medical expenses, accidental death and permanent total disability, personal liability, hijack etc. can be insured against, to help you maintain your peace of mind, at least regarding the financial aspect of these situations.

In order to protect yourself against all these financial risks all you need to do is buy a Travel insurance policy. Now there are various questions which come to your mind for a Travel insurance policy like what is Travel insurance policy and what are its features:

What is Travel Insurance?

Travel insurance gives you freedom to enjoy your holidays without worrying much about uncertainties involved in travelling abroad. To clear things up right away, travel insurance is not health insurance or life insurance. Travel insurance will provide you compensation for events which are beyond your control with regard to your travel only. It is intended to cover medical expenses, financial losses due to your carrier, and other losses incurred while travelling only.

What are the features of Travel Insurance?

Travel insurance covers certain pre-set events that may occur while one is travelling, such as loss of baggage, flight delay, unforeseen medical expenses, and so on. Let’s go into some more detail below:
 

• Flight Delay
  
  Travel insurance company will provide you compensation in case flight is delayed for more than 12 hours past the original scheduled departure time.
   
• Loss of Passport
  
  In case you lose your passport while you are on the trip then the travel insurance company will provide you compensation for expenses incurred in obtaining a duplicate or new passport.
   
• Loss of Checked Baggage
  
  Compensation is also for the permanent loss of checked-in baggage.
   
• Delay of Checked Baggage
  
  In case of delay of checked Baggage, compensation is provided for reasonable expenses incurred for purchase of emergency personal items.
   
• Emergency Medical Expenses
  
  Emergency Medical Expenses covers medical costs incurred due to illness or accident including medically necessary and prescribed emergency evacuation.
   
• Accidental Death and Permanent Total Disability
  
  Travel insurance gives you worldwide coverage against accidental death and disability while you're abroad anywhere in the world.
   
• Personal Liability
  
  Compensation is paid for the damages to a third party, resulting from death, injury or damage to health or property caused involuntarily by the insured person.
   
• Hijack
  
  Travel insurance company will provide you compensation in case of hijack of your common carrier. In such a case distress allowance is paid for each day of the hijack.
   

The above mentioned features can be handy in case of financial crises which you might face while travelling abroad.

Currently, insurance companies such as Tata AIG, Bajaj, ICICI Lombard and others offer travel insurance, for both single trips and multiple trips (similar to airline frequent flier miles , the multi trip insurance as it is called covers multiple trips within a defined time frame).

They also offer travel insurance to students, families for worldwide travel, or travel including or excluding the US and Canada, or Asia travel (excluding Japan). In fact, for certain countries, travel insurance is mandatory and is automatically opted into when you book your tickets. For example, those travelling to Schengen visa countries are mandatorily opted in for travel insurance. Some companies also offer specific travel insurance for senior citizens. Often, after retiring at the age of 60, individuals decide to spend more time travelling to new places and exploring the world, as planned for in their financial plan.

In all cases, it is vital to read through your policy document very carefully, and to ask your agent, or if you have a financial planner then ask your planner any questions you might need answered.

It is always better to travel with the right travel insurance in place. To put it in simple terms, travel insurance can give you peace of mind while you are enjoying holidays with your family.

And remember, insurance is an essential part of your overall financial planning. To get your financial plan in place and get started on achieving your life goals, contact us at (022) 6136 1200 today!

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Comments

nmrsridhar@apf.co.id Sep 12, 2012 Travel Insurance -- as explained in the article seems to cover all unplanned events during the travel. Is there any data available which shows how many claims made and settled? Things like flight delay and lost baggage claims (which are the most commonly lodged claims) have some clever built-in clauses where the insurer's liability is very limited.  Need to know which insurer has good track record. regds

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