I had a client very graciously educate me on this recently and I wanted to share!
You know you need travel insurance, right? Plenty of cruise lines, airlines, and hotel packges will offer their own protection. I typically don’t want to deal with a bunch of individual policies that can argue with each other about who should cover what. Most cruise lines specifically use Aon, which is…not known for being reliable when they’re needed. So what company do you pick?
Your car or homeowner’s insurance may offer travel insurance. If not, the company I typically recommend is Allianz. (Full disclosure that I am able to sell their product, so obviously I’m predisposed to be biased, but there are other companies out there!) Their website is super simple to go to, plug in your dates, countries, trip cost (which it gives you a convenient calculator to plug in the estimated cost of cruise, flights, lodging, & extras), your state of residence, and it will pop out a few options. Depending on a few factors, it might seem reasonable, or it might seem really expensive. There will usually be a few optional add-ons like Cancel for Any Reason or Rental Car coverage.
And that’s probably good enough for most of us. But Allianz also offers Annual policies. This is a policy you purchase once and it covers an entire year’s worth of travel. Now this MAY seem way more expensive than your single-trip policy you were looking at. But…it might not. Like your home or car insurance, there are factors that go in to how they calculate the cost of a policy. But, this is what I learned recently – these are DIFFERENT depending on whether it’s a single-trip policy or annual policy.
I’ll look at a similar example to my recent client’s.
Using this information, I get a quote like this
Wow that’s a lot! Let me try running that again, but with a traveler who’s 35 instead of 78.
Aha – age seems to be a factor. Now I’m going to re-run this quote for the actual traveler, but this time, I’m going to request a quote for an Annual plan.
Well those are very different numbers aren’t they! If I re-run this quote again for my 35 year old, the Annual plans are EXACTLY the same cost. My client spoke with Allianz and they confirmed to him that age is NOT factored into annual policies.
Now obviously you need to look at exactly what’s covered, the limits, and look at the Plan and Pricing Details, which will be generated for all six of the above quotes. If you’d like to add those optional add-ons, you need to click all the way through to the payment screen (you don’t have to actually pay first). But depending on your circumstances, you might be able to save a bucket of money!
I HIGHLY recommend you always research and determine the best insurance for yourself. Advisors can certainly suggest one company or another based on how easy they are to work with in the event of a claim. But only YOU know your life circumstances that could lead you to make a claim. PLEASE give the company a call if you have any questions about coverage! With Allianz specifically, I have spoken with them on the phone after a very short wait and they very clearly and patiently answered every question.
Contact me today for a travel insurance quote from Allianz or any of your other travel needs and relax.