elonii

As part of our effort to resettle, hubster and I are booking up lots of trips to make us realise how well placed the UK is to access wonderful experiences.

As I need to get insurance cover in place asap I went looking for annual travel cover today. To my dismay, the catch all on Go Compare indicated the cover was for "permanent" residents only.

I'll obviously call companies and enquire - but curious to know if anyone has had any issues. My cynical side sees that definition as a major get out of a large medical bill!

Editha

I tend to agree with your cynical side. Get confirmation in writing that you are covered.

elonii

Hehehe, I am glad it's not just me. The recent case of the Scottish girl who inadvertently let her travel insurance lapse / invalidated her policy in Vietnam has reminded me to be very much on guard.

J.JsOH

I travel outside of UK a lot. I am not impressed or assured by any travel insurance cover I have yet bought in past 6 years. Fortunately I haven't needed to make a claim but I dread the hassle of the probable brick wall I feel I would meet. That is just my impression of the insurance industry.

mikelincs

Are you in the UK, if not you will need to get the insurance from the country you are resident of.

elonii

Yep, for almost 2 years. The policy Ts & Cs I've read so far talk about a 6 month residency period prior to insurance being taken out. Possibly this is their definition of "permanent resident", at least I hope so!

elonii

I'm going to answer this for any future browsers who may also want to know - we had to go outwith the price comparison engine type offerings to see it specified on the policy, but the residency requirement is generally 6 months within the UK prior to commencement of policy. No visa stuff is relevant - we called to check.

What this would mean for a new arrival I don't know!

feelbritish

We had only been back in UK 3 months when we were travelling overseas for 3 months and those search engines plus our own bank would not give us travel insurance. Eventually we found Bupa would at much higher premiums which we had to take. Now we have to look again for our next 3 month trip and OH has so many small medical issues, not life threatening, which he has to declare and again are struggling to find insurance.

mikelincs

find firms via the comparison sites, then go to that firm via their own website and ask, you may find that you got a different answer to that given by the comparison site which is geared up simply for those that fulfil their criteria, but the actual firm amy have policy not on the comparison site.

elonii

Ah, that would make things a lot more tricky - all these policies are based on easy, box ticking scenarios. We had to spend enough time ensuring our residence stuff plus some activities we plan to do in Africa would be covered by insurance. Adding health concerns into the mix would make it very stressful. Hope you get sorted

Englishmum

Do try www.worldnomads.com

It's an Aussie based travel insurance company; however they accept clients from many other countries. A few expats who post on the forums here, for example "If1" took out cover with World Nomads when repatriating back to the U.K. On a one way ticket (in her and her spouse's case, crossing the Atlantic on the QM2 ).

The WN insurance company just needs to be satisfied that there is a home country that they can medi-vac you to in a medical emergency, where you can be treated.

I do know that "If1" phoned World Nomads in Sydney from Canada as of course her situation was a little different from the norm. She was concerned that as she would be on a ship for a week, in an emergency she wouldn't want to be med-vacced back to a hospital in Canada, but a British hospital instead.

The good news of course is that returning British Citizens are covered by the NHS from day 1 of taking up (permanent) residence again and she was reassured after speaking with the travel insurers that they would cover her and her spouse.

It's definitely worth getting on Skype and giving World Nomads a call.
Hope this helps

PS; if you go to the "Country of Residence" page and input the U.K. You will see a UK phone number listed under Customer Service. O/P if you explain everything you have written in your first post, I'm sure they can advise you í ½í¹‚