How Much Is Travel Insurance? A Traveller’s Go-To Guide

Travel policies commonly provide high-value coverage worth up to S$1 million. Here are the factors influencing how travel insurance policies are priced.

There are so many things that come into play when purchasing travel insurance — important factors to consider and how to make travel claims, how to buy the right travel plan.

You might also need to decide when annual travel insurance is more worth it than a single plan. But in this guide, we delve into how much travel insurance is and what factors can affect the premiums.

Table of contents:

Factors that determine travel insurance cost
What does emergency evacuation and repatriation in a travel insurance mean?
How much medical repatriation coverage should I get?
Other related benefits that might be helpful
Find out about other insurers

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Factors That Determine Travel Insurance Cost

Coverage level and scope of benefits

How much travel insurance cover you’re provided, and how extensive your benefits are, affects the price of your travel insurance plan.

No surprises here; a policy with higher sums assured will cost more than one that has lower sums assured. The same goes with scope of benefits, with less extensive plans costing less than those with a fuller list of benefits.

You can readily see this when choosing between different tiers in a travel insurance plan. Some insurers provide the same list benefits but with different sums assured for different tiers.

With others, you may find that the more expensive tiers not only have higher sums assured, but may also include benefits such as trip cancellation not found in the cheaper tiers.

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Geographical region

Travel insurance costs are priced according to how far your travel destination is from Singapore. Insurers may go according to zones, such as grouping all Southeast East countries into one zone, and Asia Pacific into another zone, and so forth.

In any case, you will be asked to indicate your host country during application, and your policy will be charged accordingly.

Note that if you’re going to multiple countries, you will be charged according to the furthest country you are visiting (or the country for which your policy will be most expensive). This applies even if you’re spending only a few days at the farthest destination, and the majority of your holiday at a nearby country.

You can try getting separate quotes for different legs of your journey – this may help you save on your total travel insurance cost.

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Duration of your trip

As you’d expect, the longer your travel insurance cover, the higher your travel insurance cost will be. The good news is, prices follow a curve rather than going up in a straight line, so the longer your trip, the lower your travel insurance cost likely becomes on a per-day basis.

This also means that travel insurance for short trips is highly affordable, so there’s actually more reason – not less – to make sure you purchase a plan before jetting off on your long weekend getaway.

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Number of persons covered

By default, travel insurance plans are charged on a per-person basis, so if you’re travelling with a friend, you can expect the total cost of insurance to be doubled.

However, there are also group travel insurance and family travel insurance plans that are designed to help travellers save.

In a group travel plan, several persons are named under one travel policy. While there may be individual claims limits provided, there is also an overarching policy limit. This policy limit is the maximum sum that will be paid out, no matter how many claimants there are.

This means that should the entire group of travellers lose all their luggage, the combined value of claims cannot exceed the policy limit – which may result in insufficient reimbursement for each individual traveller.

Family travel insurance plans work the same way, but are reserved for family groups only, such as parents travelling with their children.

When choosing group or family travel insurance, be sure to find out the overall policy limit and evaluate if that would make for sufficient reimbursement for all travellers.

You can try purchasing two or more group policies to get around a low policy limit while lowering your travel insurance costs.

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Cancel-for-any-reason clause

Most of the benefits in your travel insurance policy are only applicable for covered reasons – i.e., circumstances and situations that your insurer states it will cover.

For instance, travel policies cover trip cancellations due to personal reasons such as serious illness or injury, but not, say, a home emergency, such as flooding the night before your flight.

Claims for reasons not covered will generally be rejected, which your insurer is well within their rights to do. However, some travel insurance policies offer what’s known as cancel-for-any-reason (CFAR), which expands the number of situations under which you can claim reimbursement.

This, of course, comes at a price, and you can expect policies with CFAR clauses to cost more. Do note that CFAR generally covers only up to 50% of the cost of your claims, so you’ll need to assess whether the extra cost is worth it.

What does emergency evacuation and repatriation in a travel insurance plan mean?

Should you suffer a serious injury, illness or accident while overseas, you may need to be brought back to Singapore for continued treatment and proper care. However, you could run into a wrinkle – your condition may render you medically unfit to board a commercial flight.

That’s when emergency evacuation and repatriation benefits in your travel insurance kicks in.

Generally speaking, there are three main functions covered under emergency evacuation and repatriation benefits. They are:

Emergency evacuation – removing you from danger and transporting you to a medical facility to emergency treatment. One example would be ambulance service to transport you to a hospital after a car crash.
Medical repatriation – arranging transport (under medical supervision, if necessary) to bring you back to Singapore if you are unable to board a commercial flight.
Repatriation of remains – if death occurs overseas, arranging transport to convey mortal remains back to Singapore

Besides these three core functions, travel insurance plans may also include other ancillary benefits. We’ll discuss some of these benefits later in the article.

How much medical repatriation coverage should I get?

According to four real-life case studies by insurer Chubb, medical evacuation can cost anywhere from US$13,000 to US$412,000.

The cost of emergency evacuation and medical repatriation depends on a few factors, including:

The infrastructure available in the region you are travelling in. Getting you to a hospital in a city is much simpler compared to having to airlift you off a mountain.
How far away you are from Singapore. The longer the flight, the more expensive it would be.
The severity of your condition. Trying to extricate and move someone with potential spinal injury requires more expertise than, say, driving you to a clinic for stitches.
The complexity of the journey. This can be variously impacted by all of the factors above.
The cost of medical and emergency services in your host country.

To cover as many different scenarios as possible, insurers commonly offer between S$100,000 to S$1 million (or more) in medical repatriation benefits.

This range, especially the upper end, should be more than enough for all but the most extreme scenarios – but if you’re planning to engage in dangerous activities, you should be getting a specialised insurance policy anyway.

Having said that, it is still a good idea to pay attention to the coverage offered just on the (extremely slim) chance that you end up needing it. Furthermore, for something as crucial as medical repatriation, it pays to err on the side of caution.

A good rule of thumb is to match the coverage to the region you’re travelling to. For Southeast Asia and nearby, going with a lower limit is likely safe, while for destinations that are farther away, a higher limit is probably a better idea.

In any case, if you feel the limit is too low, go ahead and choose a plan with a higher one. The difference in premiums is likely to be negligible, as travel insurance plans sold in Singapore are highly affordable anyway.

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Other related benefits that might be helpful

Insurers may offer the following related benefits that may be useful in coping with the aftermath of an injury, illness or death.

Note that this is not an exhaustive list, and neither are these standard inclusions in every policy – which of these you get can vary from plan to plan. Also, these benefits, like all others, are subject to the insurer’s own terms and conditions.

Guardian and/or children benefit

This covers the cost of flying in a trusted adult, or hiring a professional nanny, to help take care of children so parents/adults can focus on dealing with the injury or illness.

The cost of sending children back home may also be covered under this benefit.

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Companion benefit

Pays for accommodation costs and daily expenses for a spouse or adult companion accompanying the patient. This is separate from hospital cash allowance, which is meant to help the patient offset daily expenses while hospitalised.

Hospital visit benefit

This benefit can be used to facilitate a visit by a close friend or family member while you’re hospitalised overseas. This benefit may only be triggered when certain requirements are met, such as if you have to be warded for a prolonged period.

Compassionate expenses

May be used to defray the additional costs or unexpected expenses arising from an accident, injury or illness overseas when travelling.

Emergency expenses and miscellaneous charges

This allows you or your travel companions to claim for various expenses and charges, such as emergency phone services, highway assistance, etc.

Child education grant

A lump-sum payout that can be used to help pay for educational needs and expenses of surviving children.

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How Much Is Travel Insurance? A Traveller’s Go-To Guide

Alevin Chan