While there’s no doubt about the fact that you definitely need travel insurance if you’re going abroad, just what type of travel insurance you need depends on a number of factors, such as where you’re going, what you can afford and how long you’re going away for.
Comprehensive travel insurance
As the term for it suggests (even though the specific insurer may refer to it using a different term), comprehensive travel insurance offers coverage for all the elements which can be covered by a travel insurance plan. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every single possible triggering event will be covered by any and all travel insurers. What it rather means is that it’s likely the most inclusive or “fullest” package you can get from that specific insurer, covering all the elements that specific insurer offers coverage for.
Basket travel insurance
Basket travel insurance is essentially just a travel insurance plan which is comprised out of a basket of elements which are covered, such as a medical emergency in addition to losing some of your personal belongings, just to make an example. Like comprehensive insurance, the exact elements which are covered are explicitly stated by the insurer, but basket travel insurance would inevitably be cheaper than comprehensive coverage because it covers only a selection of elements.
A little later on we’ll discuss designer travel insurance, which puts basket travel insurance into perspective because basket travel insurance packages are usually explicitly set out by the insurer and you cannot really modify the elements to be covered.
Incident specific travel insurance
Incident-specific travel insurance isolates triggering events even further than basket insurance, usually targeting something very specific. For example, the specific incident may be the loss of your luggage while it’s being transported by the airline, getting sick while you’re at your destination, losing your personal valuable possessions at any specified time during your trip, etc.
Designer travel insurance
Again, these are not necessarily the official terms used to define the different types of travel insurance you’d generally have as options and that’s certainly the case with what is effectively designer insurance. It might perhaps be referred to as something like a flexi travel insurance plan or anything along those lines – it’s really up to the insurer to name their offerings any which way they desire.
Anyway, we use the term “designer” insurance just to describe the type of insurance option you have available to you when you can effectively choose what it covers. More importantly, it’s about what it doesn’t cover because looking at it from this point of view can ensure that you save quite a bit of money leaving some aspects you’d otherwise have to pay for out of your designer travel insurance plan. For example, if you’re specifically travelling on something like a business visa and you’ll be completing work in an area serviced by Pottroff & Karlin, the train lawyers, the legal coverage you might have otherwise had to include in your travel insurance plan can have its possible costs offset by the free initial consultation and case evaluation offered by these lawyers.
