Many in retirement are travelling comfortably, with three key factors contributing to their happiness – good physical and mental health and enough money to enjoy life.
Perhaps the assumption that markets are still anchored by predictable economic policies needs to be challenged. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, political volatility – once background noise – is potentially reshaping investment risk at a structural level.
Critical for seniors to come clean on travel insurance
One of the highlights of being retired is supposed to be all the travel you now have time for. Unfortunately, one of the things that may be essential to travel – insurance – typically does not get cheaper with age. If you have a pre-existing medical condition/s, the quest for insurance becomes even harder.
“It is an interesting and challenging dilemma,” chief executive officer of Insured Nomads, Andrew Jernigan, tells The Golden Times. “Just look at the data, it’s hard to build [these policies] because our bodies start to fall apart.”
Australian Travel Industry Association chief executive officer Dean Long says that one of the key things all travellers need to be is upfront regarding any pre-existing condition.
“Travel insurance does have a pretty high-risk intolerance for people with pre-existing conditions and different insurers provide different levels of cover,” he says.
The free travel insurance you might be able to get on your credit card, for example, will probably have very high exclusions for pre-existing conditions compared with policies you can buy.
“If you’re going to a Cover-More or nib Travel or Europe Assistance (it underwrites Flight Centre’s policies), as long as you’re upfront about what they are and you’re not a day out from open-heart surgery, you should be able to find a good level of protection that’ll allow you to have the cover you need and the peace of mind that comes with it,” Long says.
“The more pre-existing conditions you have, the higher the chances of you having a claim on the policy. And, therefore, the policy will be more expensive.”
Your travel destination will also have an impact. Given the cost of health care in the US, insurance for a holiday there, for someone with several pre-existing conditions, will be especially expensive.
However, Long says you might be able to negotiate some exclusions for pre-existing conditions with the insurer. After all, travel insurance isn’t just for medical emergencies, although that obviously helps. It can cover you for a range of things and some cover is better than no cover at all.
“There’s more to a travel insurance policy, obviously, than just the medical components. Those are a massive benefit of travel insurance. But there are a lot of other components such as pre-trip cancelation and things that goes into the construct of the policy,” says Dylan Wilkinson, nib Travel general manager, international and partnerships.
nib Travel insurance offers cover for some medical conditions automatically, but if a condition isn’t included in this list, a potential customer can undertake a medical screening process.
“So that helps you apply for cover for pre-existing conditions. Something like a heart condition, for example, would fall into that category. The process that they follow is tailored to each individual and the medical screening process considers the individual conditions and circumstances,” Wilkinson says.
Those polices are underwritten at an individual level and the traveller would have to pay an additional premium, but it allows the customer to determine the level of cover that’s appropriate to them.
“If they prefer not to screen, that’s absolutely their choice, but I guess it’s sort of on an understanding then that they wouldn’t actually have cover if something were to occur as a result of that condition,” Wilkinson says.
When buying a travel insurance policy, it’s also important to understand what’s included. Not all policies, for example, include repatriation of mortal remains in the unfortunate event that somebody passes away while travelling.
Repatriation of mortal remains is covered by nib Travel’s comprehensive, essentials and annual multi trip plans.
“Medical evacuation and repatriation are automatically included under those policies as well,” Wilkinson says. “Our emergency assistance team operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The team are based in Australia and New Zealand and can provide support in a number of different languages.”
There is also another option. There are several global companies that specialise in medevac and repatriation.
“There are medical evacuation memberships you can buy that will get you back to your country,” Insured Nomad’s Jernigan says.
These are generally globally based, so be aware they do not fall under Australian regulation. One of these is Global Rescue offering seven-day membership for individual medical only, starting at $US139 ($AU223) for individual and going up to an annual membership (up to 45 days per trip) for $US369 ($AU591). These memberships include travel assistance, advisory services, field rescue and hospital transport back to a home hospital of choice.
While each case varies based on its specific circumstances, generally, if an Australian citizen is injured while traveling in the US and possesses Global Rescue Membership, they would be covered for transportation back to an Australian hospital.
“Global Rescue does not put restrictions on nationality, activities, places travelled (except for extreme polar regions, that is, below the 60th parallel or above the 80th parallel north), and elevation climbed (elevations above 4,600 metres require our high-altitude evacuation package), so we can certainly provide you with a membership for your travels,” Global Rescue director of communications, Bill McIntyre, says.
