Essential work abroad, year out and gap year insurance information.
We explain why you need it, how it works and what to look out for. Get quotes from featured insurance companies and check out our gap year insurance FAQs.
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Insurance in 15 seconds
- Travel insurance can (among other things and subject to conditions):
- pay for health/medical expenses and provide medical support
- issue refunds for costs relating to a cancelled trip
- replace or pay for lost/stolen personal belongings
- help you return home early in emergency situations (repatriation)
- Travel insurance medical cover is crucial:
- overseas medical costs and ambulances may be privatised and hugely expensive
- if you don’t have insurance you will be responsible for paying medical bills
- an air ambulance from the USA to UK could cost between £35-45,000
- Not all policies are the same:
- Check the policy will cover you for accidents that happen while working
- Imagine all the activities you could do and make sure they are included
- Read the small print and pay attention to the Exclusions
- Most insurance policies charge an Excess – this is an amount that is deducted from your claim
- Excess charges vary; know what costs you’ll be responsible for
- Low cost policies are cheap for a reason, read the policy small print carefully
- Check out our Featured Insurance here
- Read our Gap Year insurance FAQ’s here
An alarming number of people travel without insurance, buy insurance that isn’t adequate (something only discovered when they need to make a claim) or don’t know when or what they can use their insurance for.
The better you understand the benefits of gap year insurance, the easier it will be to choose something suitable.
A doctors appointment could cost £100+. An air ambulance from the USA to the UK could cost between £35-45,000. In-patient treatment can be even more.
The following information is based on travel insurance for UK nationals travelling from the UK but much of the information is generic and could provide a good insight in to the benefits and pitfalls of any gap year insurance.
It doesn’t apply to me?
You will take extra care when travelling, but despite your best efforts some things will be out of your control. Things can and do go wrong. For example:
- Illness or accident (flu, tummy bug or a sprained ankle)
- Involved in a car accident as a driver, passenger or as a pedestrian
- Innocently caught up in a ski or snowboard accident
- Someone at home is taken seriously ill and you need to get back immediately
- Your personal belongings may be lost or stolen while you travel.
It is impossible to predict how, when or if you’ll need cover; but without adequate insurance you will be risking bills of £100’s and possibly £1,000’s.
How can gap year insurance help?
A good gap year insurance should (subject to circumstances) be able to support you in the following situations:
- Death. Arranging for a funeral abroad or repatriation of remains (and associated costs)
- Serious injury. Ambulance/air ambulance, mountain rescue, hospital treatment, flying a relative to be with you, flying you home accompanied by a doctor or nurse. Liaising with the health care provider to ensure correct treatment
- General accident or illness. Medical costs for GP visits and cost of medication
- Cancelled trip. Where you can’t start the trip as planned, you can recover pre-paid expenses
- Loss or theft of personal belongings. You won’t always have the same levels of security as you may have at home but as long as you are seen to be taking reasonable care, you can claim for lost or stolen belongings.
It is crucial that you have appropriate cover for your trip as the cost of the unexpected could be more than you think – or could afford.
I thought healthcare in Australia was free. I was devastated when I got a bill from the ambulance service for $1000.
How much cover do I need?
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) suggest a minimum of £2 million medical cover for trips outside of Europe. Our featured insurance companies offer policies with medical cover ranging from £3 million to £10 million.
In the UK we take free health care for granted. However, in many other countries health care is privatised meaning that as a visitor to those countries you will need to pay for any treatments. Even a simple visit to the doctor could set you back over £100. The FCO suggest that an air ambulance from USA’s East coast could cost between £35-45,000. In patient treatment can be much more. If you aren’t insured you’ll need to pay for these bills – they won’t go away and failure to pay could have serious legals and immigration implications.
You also want to have cover for your personal items – camera, phone, lap top/tablet. A common oversight is to undervalue the cost of replacing stolen clothes, personal items and luggage. (See our Latest News article for more about under-insuring belongings).
TIP: check the definition of Valuable Items within the policy and read the Exclusions section of the personal belongings section. This will help you understand what is and isn’t covered. Watches, mobile phones and sunglasses are items which are commonly excluded.
Always read your policy documents carefully to be sure that you are covered for everything you expect – pay special attention to activities, excess fees and exclusions.
Which is the best insurance company?
As each policy has different levels of cover, benefits, exclusions, excesses and cost it is impossible to label one policy or company as being “the best”.
You should choose a policy that best matches your personal needs. The comments above are aimed at encouraging you to check the small print, to appreciate why your are buying insurance and to understand what it can/should do for you. We have offered a sample of the many companies that sell insurance. There are many, many more online and we encourage you to do your own research.
Check our Featured Insurance here
Buying travel insurance isn’t a tick-box exercise to satisfy the visa application. It is an essential protection for you while you travel.
Gap year insurance buying guide and tips
Insurance summary tables (listing the maximum levels of cover) are rarely sufficient to properly judge a policy. Always seek out the policy wording and read the detail.
Review websites are good, but many of the reviews are rating the experience of purchasing the insurance policy, not the experiences of making a claim.
If you buy a gap year insurance policy and you are not happy with it there will be an option to cancel and receive a refund as long as you arrange cancellation within 14 days (UK) and before travel. Individual policy terms and conditions may apply for cancellation after 14 days.
Policies specific to trips to Australia or New Zealand can be more affordable as they consider that you are at lower risk. However, make sure that the policy will still cover you for any stopovers either on the way or on the way back from your destination. Purchasing a fully worldwide policy from the outset will give you most flexibility.
TIP: check the definition of Valuable Items within the policy and read the Exclusions section of the personal belongings section. This will help you understand what is and isn’t covered. Watches, mobile phones and sunglasses are items which are commonly excluded.
Always read your policy documents carefully to be sure that you are covered for everything you expect – pay special attention to activities, excess fees and exclusions.
Check out this FCO video which shows how costs can mount up.
Endsleigh Insurance Services
We have known Endsleigh for over 15 years and our staff have worked with them in some of the most challenging situations – multi-vehicle road accidents in North America, air-evacuations in Ghana and sadly a couple of deaths. We believe that the Endsleigh policies, while not the cheapest, represent good value and more importantly, the well designed cover is supported by outstanding emergency assistance and excellent claims handling.
They offer multiple types of insurance including Adventure, Work Abroad and Volunteering for trips lasting up to 365 days.
The Endsleigh Gap Year and Career Break insurance policies include cover for medical emergencies, lost or stolen belongings, cash and cancelled trips as standard.
Endsleigh is the only insurance company recommended by the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS)
Endsleigh: find out more/buy online
True Traveller
True Traveller provides a number of gap year insurance solutions and are particularly popular with people travelling for more than 12 months.
They offer add-on Activity Packs so that you can enhance your policy to better meet your needs. If you will be working abroad make sure you get the right Activity Pack for the work/activities that you’ll be doing.
In addition True Traveller has a 24 month policy designed to meet the requirements of the Canadian IEC visa.
True Traveller insurance is available to residents of the UK and any EEA Country.
Subject to circumstances they can also provide cover if you are already away; so if your original policy has lapsed contact True Traveller for a quote.
However, please don’t simply take our word for it. Go online, get your quote and read your policy fully so that you are satisfied that the cover meets your needs. A good investment now could save you a lot further down the line.
If you’d like to read our Insurance FAQ’s, click here.
FAQs: Work Abroad, Year Out and Gap Year insurance
There are a few myths and misunderstandings about gap year travel insurance and these FAQs should help to direct you to a policy that is right for you.
A good gap year insurance policy will cover for cancellation of your trip. For most people the most expensive up-front cost is the round-the-world flight so it is worth buying insurance soon after paying for your flight to protect any payment or deposit. (You buy the policy to start from the date that you leave your home country, but cancellation cover is usually applied from the date you buy the policy.)
These countries have a reciprocal health care agreement which means that some treatments will be either free or subsidised. However, certain aspects are excluded. For example the ambulance service in Australia is privatised so you would be responsible for any associated costs, which can be significant. On arrival to Australia most insurance companies will require that you enroll with Medicare (Medicare is a publicly funded universal health care scheme in Australia) to ensure that, if you have the need, you can receive care under the reciprocal agreement.
A good travel insurance policy will also cover repatriation (flying you home if medically necessary), will fly a family member to be with you in the case of serious hospitalisation and it would also cover the cost to fly you back if a relative at home became seriously ill. So, despite the reciprocal healthcare agreements you should still have a good gap year insurance policy.
Not all policies include cover for accidents in the work place. When you shop around make sure that the insurance you choose will include the types of work you intend to do. (Remember that on a working holiday you may be tempted to do an unusual job or something that you wouldn’t normally consider doing at home – working on a ranch, harvesting, waiting tables, factory work, etc.)
Note: cover for “working” is normally limited to accident/injury. It would be unusual to cover for loss of earnings or liability. Liability would normally be covered through your employers insurance.
Some insurance companies differentiate between “working” and “volunteering”. Where it is included, the definition for “work” may exclude anything manual or working with machinery. Some companies define “volunteering” as working for a registered charity – which may not always be the case.
If there is a chance that you will be skiing or snowboarding while you are away it would be sensible to include this in your cover from the outset. Cover can vary enormously from one company to another; when looking at your options you may want to consider the following:
- How long does the season last and is the winter sports element of the cover available for the whole season? Some companies limit winter sports by days/weeks or as a percentage of your overall trip.
- Is there an option to add winter sports while you are already away? Where available it is a useful option, but if you are travelling with skiing/boarding equipment it will usually only be covered where you have paid for winter sports cover from the outset.
- Are there any limitations – can you ski/board off-piste, with or without a guide? Can you guide or instruct and still be covered?
- If you are working a season, remember that your skiing will improve daily. Skiing off-piste could be off the radar now but, how about after 5 months on the slopes..?
If you are a non-skier working in a winter resort environment you may well find yourself sliding down the slopes before the season is out. Just because you don’t fancy it now doesn’t mean you won’t do it.
Activities defined as “Winter sports” aren’t limited to skiing or snowboarding. If you are ice-skating, sledging, snow shoe walking or snow mobiling you will, most likely, need to have winter sports cover.
Some winter sports may be excluded, even if you buy a winter sports add-on. Examples could include heli-skiing and ski-jumping.
If you will be using a snow park, always check that the policy has appropriate cover.
Annual Multi-trip policies are intended for people who go away on short trips several times in a year. They limit the cover to journeys of 30, 60 or sometimes 90 consecutive days at a time. If your total time away will be less than the maximum period covered then it may be appropriate for your trip.
Free policies associated with a bank account or credit card tend to have similar time limitations.
You’ll need to check the policy wording specifically or call the insurance company. However, in general if you know that you will be away for more than the maximum period allowed by the cover then your multi-trip policy would be void. In these cases you would need to take a policy specific to your trip starting from the day you depart your home country.
Some insurers will allow this, others won’t. If you are uncertain of your plans make sure that you purchase an insurance policy that allows you to lengthen the cover.
In general terms, yes. A local company policy is unlikely to cover any international needs that you have. For example repatriation for medical reasons, loss of personal items, replacement of passport or return home in an emergency situation.
Additionally, it may not cover for trips to other countries; for example if you are working in Whistler, Canada and want to travel to America for a couple of weeks. Finally, if you leave your job (by choice or otherwise) the policy will terminate and you will find it hard to get a new one.
Excess charges apply to most travel insurance policies. The excess is the amount of the claim that you have to pay yourself. Cheaper policies may have higher excess charges, some have a variable excess that fluctuates depending on the activity that you do. Always read the policy exclusions and excess sections of the policy. Sometimes its more helpful to read about what isn’t covered rather than what is.
You can buy insurance from a dedicated insurance company or through a travel agent either in person, over the phone or online. Most companies provide a summary of cover at the point of sale which gives a broad overview of the policy. However, to fully understand what is and (more importantly) what isn’t included you will need to read the policy wording. This should be available to you before you buy, but sometimes it is hard to locate on a website. If you can’t find it, contact the company and ask for a copy.
Price comparison website are a popular way of selecting insurance based on price. However, there are so many different types of cover it is very difficult to make an exact like-for-like comparison. Additionally, the summary of the policy provided rarely goes in to enough detail to allow you make an informed choice. Always seek out the policy wording (and exclusions) to know that the policy is not only the right price but also provides the right level of protection.
We feature two insurance companies which provide a broad selection of cover types. You can find out more, get quotes and buy online here.
Once you have purchased a policy you will normally be sent/emailed 2 documents:
- a certificate or schedule which confirms the type of insurance you have bought, your personal details and the dates of cover
and - the policy wording which contains the specific details relating to all aspects of the cover.
You must check both documents very carefully. For accuracy (spelling, dates etc) but just as important, to be sure that you are happy that the policy will meet your needs. The policy wording is the document that sets out the conditions of your cover.
It is your responsibility to check that the policy meets your needs. There is normally a 14 day cooling off period during which you can cancel a policy and receive a full refund (as long as you haven’t started your trip).
