We’re off back to the UK for a bit. The issue I’m having is finding insurance cover for our journey from Aussie to the UK. We used GoWalkabout when we left the UK over a decade ago, and they covered our entire journey plus the month and the other end while we were in termporary accomodation and were looking for someone to live.

I’m really struggling to find any suitable one way travel insurance policies that cover returning back to the UK including the month in an AirBnB that we have booked when we arrive.. This is especially an issue because we obviously have to carry with us more expensive things like laptops, jewellery, passports and documents etc that are not covered by marine shipping insurance and therefore can’t go in the container with all of our furniture and other household stuff.

All the policies people have recommended to me so far have not been suitable. Obviously people don’t read the small print carefully because regular and cheaper travel insurance policies won’t pay out unless you have proof of a round trip journey and won’t also repatritate to your destination as opposed to your starting location.

Any recommendations?

This is the company I used when travelling one way from Canada, via the States, to the UK. I contacted them at their UK office via phone to ensure that I was getting the coverage required.

https://www.worldnomads.co.uk/

Thanks, I’ve just phoned up both the Aussie and the UK World Nomads and they can’t give us the cover we need. Either we would be covered as a UK citizen for our journey back to the UK but they won’t cover our posessions at all once we arrive in the country, and have no option to extend the cover for the first month and will be in an AirBnB and won’t have a permanent address. The other option is getting cover for that as an Aussie resident, but then they would only be able to repatriate us back to Aussie if we got sick or were delayed on the journey itself and not onwards to the UK.

Anyone else?

I would have also recommended World Nomads (in fact I think I did a few years ago when If1 and her spouse relocated back to the UK via the Queen Mary 2 liner! ) but they don’t seem to offer what you want.

I think though, whatever you do I would still buy insurance with them or a similar company if only for the medical insurance coverage part of it.....it’s not unknown for people to get ill en-route or on a plane (eg. DVT - it happened to a friend’s dad when he collapsed at the end of his flight as he stood up when travelling to Singapore and ended up in Singapore General Hospital).

You could check with the Air BnB owner if there is a safe for valuables (and if you are staying for a month then perhaps they should provide one, after all most hotels do!).

Maybe you could see if you can find anything on the main boards or in the forums at www.moneysavingexpert.co.uk

As you know, you will be covered by the NHS from the moment you move back there. Good Luck!

Oh I agree and would not risk travelling without insurance, espaciallty with having a stopover on the way there. I’ve never once stayed in an AirBnB with any kind of room safe. Most places are usually someones actual home, second home/holiday house, or secondary dwelling. They don’t offer all the same amenities as a hotel, but are a fraction of the price, so I would not expect them too. I’m happy as long as there are cooking and laundry facilities I can use and it’s not unclean. I’ve seen some awfully cruddy places in my times, but that would be an entirely different topic of conversation, so I won’t go there. I’ve looked at Moneysavingexperts and This Is Money websites, but everything is very specific to UK residents and not a lot of use to expats who have been out of the country for a long time. I really hadn’t anticipating this to be so difficult. There are plenty of UK based insurer who offer exactly the cover we are after, if we had been travelling in the opposite direction but they don’t offer the same for people returning the other way.

I’ve just had an idea.....maybe try Endsleigh Insurance. Their main clientele is the student market (UK students and overseas students studying in the UK) and so obviously are usually resident in temporary accommodation. You don’t have to be a student though to take out insurance with them!

They have been in the business for many years (my spouse and then our daughter had their belongings insured with Endsleigh when they were both away at university and in fact my husband had some gadgets stolen when he was in a shared house when at uni in Manchester in the early 1980s and he said that Endsleigh paid up pretty quickly (yes, it was a loooong time ago lol!)

If you go to their website - www.endsleigh.co.uk

- you will see that you can do a ‘live chat’ with one of their representatives. They may be able to help you as they do offer a ‘gadgets’ insurance for laptops/tablets/phones etc.

I don’t know if you have any relatives in the UK but perhaps with their permission and the agreement of the insurance company their address could be used as your ‘main’ address for one month whilst you are still ‘travelling’ and staying in the AirBnB?

It may be that you could buy the travel medical insurance element from World Nomads and once in the UK, gadget insurance from Endsleigh?

It’s all I can currently think of, but hope it helps!

Thanks, but I have already spoken to Endsleigh, as we had used them for insurance when we were at Uni a couple of decades ago, and whilst they were very helpful, they cannot give us any kind of cover because we need to have been resident in the UK for 6 months and be registered with a GP beforehand. We will have just arrived in the country and won’t be able to register with a GP until we find somewhere to live, hence the month booked in an AirBnB first. Unfortunatelty we don’t have the sort of families where we would be able to use their address or stay with them for any period of time, hence needing the AirBnB. A lot of people we know who have returned to the UK, have ended up staying with parents, siblings or grandparents for the initial period of time after arriving.
I think we’ll probably ened up having to get insurance for our actual journey with World Nomads and then try and sort out some sort of contents insurance in the UK separately. I have no idea whether we would be able to use the AirBnB address for a regular contents insurance policy and using the address as our residence for that time, since we are there a month, and then changing the address once we move into a rental. I’m running out of options though. We tried a broker this morning and were told that travel insurance is a low value, non repeating thing and so they wouldn’t waste their time on it normally, unless we were talking about an long expedition with expensive equipment. Not very helpful. I tried another company who did have policies for people who has recently come to live in the UK and had less than 6 months residency, but they would then only cover you for travel outside of the UK and not domestically.