Warning for Nomads: Is Trip Protection Covered by Your Travel Insurance?

Travel insurance and health insurance for nomads are tricky topics to cover because the world is not designed to cater to this lifestyle. There are very few insurance providers offering products that can meet the needs of someone who travels between multiple countries full-time, although finally in recent years we are starting to see a few bubble up. I’ve been excited to try different approaches to insuring my long-term travels, however, I’ve continued to run into the same problem no matter what avenue I take: lack of Trip Protection clauses.

I am particularly concerned about Trip Protection because in 2019, I hiked the Slovenian portion of the Alpe-Adria Trail. I was doing other hikes in other countries beforehand. I planned to fly to and from Slovenia via Adria Airways, but a few weeks before that leg of my trip, Adria Airways went bankrupt, cancelled all flights, and didn’t refund anyone. I had to book a flight to Zurich and a 10 hour overnight bus to Ljubljana instead, and then book a bus and all new flights to leave the country and continent at the end of the hike. I was out hundreds of dollars.

I had thankfully purchased a World Nomads travel insurance plan prior to the trip, so I was able to file a claim with them and be reimbursed more than $600. 

This year, I am getting ready for another longer multi-destination trip abroad. As a digital nomad, I can now travel non-stop full-time, which means the cost of an insurance plan via World Nomads becomes quite expensive. They also have a term limit of 180 days, after which I’d need to buy a new plan. I need another solution, but is there one?

*Note – I am not an affiliate and have not been paid to talk about any of these providers. I have personally used World Nomads and AIG in the past. I recently bought SafetyWing but haven’t started using it yet, and may decide to cancel it. The one exception is Travel Insurance Master – I use this tool to search and compare providers and am an affiliate.

Which nomad insurance providers are popular?

Other nomads suggest subscription-based policies with companies such as SafetyWing and Genki as an insurance solution for long-term travel. You pay a small ongoing monthly fee, like with a Netflix subscription, and you can cancel it when you’re ready to come home. Their international medical benefits are helpful for full-time nomads who won’t have access to their home country health insurance plans for months at a time. Genki is only medical insurance for nomads (not travel insurance), and you might be thankful for their Resident Plan since it includes routine check-ups and not just emergency situations. Some of SafetyWing’s Nomad Health plans also offer check-ups.

SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance (unlike Nomad Health) is a combination “travel medical insurance” product, so I went with this for $45 a month. I wanted the travel insurance aspect to be included. It’s two birds one stone, although it reminds me of Ron Swanson’s infamous quote to “never half-ass two things, whole ass one thing.” The health benefits are not as complete as their Nomad Health product, and their travel insurance benefits are not as complete as what other travel-insurance-only providers are offering.

Why is nomad insurance insufficient for Trip Protection?

However, upon reading into SafetyWing’s coverage more thoroughly, I realized they only cover Trip Delay (if you have an unexpected flight delay of more than 12 hours, they’ll put up to $100 per day, maximum of 2 days, towards your overnight hotel) and Trip Interruption. Their Trip Interruption policy is bare bones; it just means that if you get sick or injured, they will reimburse your transportation costs to a hospital. 

SafetyWing does not offer Trip Protection. Cancelled flights, hotels, and tours will not be reimbursed. If the same situation from 2019 happened to me again now and I was only covered by SafetyWing instead of World Nomads, there would be no recourse for me to get my money back on the cancelled flights.

SafetyWing also has other drawbacks, like a high deductible for medical treatment. Brett and Michael Are Going Places have done great round-ups about the general pros and cons of different nomad insurance providers. My post today is mainly focusing on Trip Protection.

(As a side note I will add two random things that I found out firsthand after purchasing SafetyWing, which are not related to Trip Protection – one is that the Adventure Sports add-on is not available for Americans. Luckily hiking up to 4,500 meters, or 14,764 feet, is already included in the plan, but if you’re wanting to hike in someplace like Nepal, this sucks. Also, they advertise during the signup process that all existing customers can earn $20 every time they refer a new customer, but I couldn’t find my referral link. I had to contact them to ask about it, and was told this also isn’t available to Americans). 

Why are travel credit cards insufficient for Trip Protection?

I asked three other travel bloggers who use SafetyWing what they do about the Trip Protection problem. Most hadn’t considered the issue before, but all said they rely on their travel-insurance-protected credit cards.

So, I finally bit the bullet and applied for a Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card, which has been touted for years by both casual part-time and serious full-time travelers as the best travel credit card. You earn rewards points from everyday purchases made with the card, or 5x points for travel-related purchases made with the card. Any travel-related purchases you make using the card are also automatically protected by travel insurance benefits. If something goes wrong with an aspect of your trip that you booked with a Chase Sapphire, it will be eligible for making a claim for possible reimbursement. 

I thought buying all of my flights using my new Chase Sapphire Preferred card would be a smart backup plan. If SafetyWing wasn’t going to cover certain travel disasters for me, then hopefully Chase would. Before signing up, I was able to look at a very vague list of what Chase will cover. It advises the following:

“Trip Cancellation / Interruption Insurance: If your trip is canceled or cut short by sickness, severe weather and other covered situations, you can be reimbursed up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per trip for your pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses, including passenger fares, tours and hotels.”

So what does “other covered situations” mean? You have to already have an account and a card with Chase so that you can log in to read a more in-depth description of the coverage. Without this, you can only get as far as this page and can’t click “Learn More.” Although, with a more crafty internet search I’ve been able to locate this PDF which you should be able to read without an account.

When you get to Learn More, this is the list of “What’s Not Covered”:

Financial insolvency of the travel supplier is the exact situation I have been trying to protect against. I can also imagine plenty of situations where a tour operator might cancel a guided trip for reasons other than weather or strike. While I’m at it, “trips longer than 60 days” is also raising my eyebrow as a digital nomad. Further reading on that topic yields:

“No coverage will be provided for a Trip that is scheduled to last longer than sixty (60) days. If a Trip exceeds sixty (60) days in duration, We will only reimburse the pro-rated portion of any Non-Refundable pre-paid Eligible Travel Expenses up to the first sixty (60) days of the Trip.”

What is the solution?

At this point, it seems like the only way to achieve Trip Protection is still to purchase a World Nomads plan or another similar full-service travel insurance plan that is not trying to double up as a dual-function nomad product or medical insurer (although a lot of normal travel insurance providers actually offer some great medical benefits; some of the generic travel insurance plans I’ve been researching via AIG Travel Guard rival the medical inclusions offered by SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance product).

If I want peace of mind, I have to now purchase a THIRD THING. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

I thought about cancelling SafetyWing and only having World Nomads and the Chase card, but again, World Nomads is not an ongoing indefinite subscription like SafetyWing or Genki, and it’s more expensive. A quote for 180 days/6 months (April-September) was $548.68 for their Standard Plan or $787.76 for the Explorer Plan, and I’d have to buy another plan for the next period since I’ll still be traveling in October. With SafetyWing, $45 per month x6 months = $270. 

If I get on Travel Insurance Master and input my criteria for a 7 month trip, the most affordable plans recommended to me are Travelex for $327, AIG Travel Guard Essential for $119.53, AIG Travel Guard Plus for $252.59, or AIG Travel Guard Preferred for $431.77. At first glance, these all say they cover 100% of costs for Trip Cancellation or Trip Interruption, and in some cases 150%. Travel Guard Plus and Preferred even offer an optional Cancel for Any Reason clause. 

All of these plans have emergency medical benefits. None of them have a medical deductible. They don’t offer regular doctor check-ups or screenings, but neither does the SafetyWing Nomad Insurance. Note that the AIG plans will not insure travel that was booked using redeemed points or frequent traveler miles, such as Chase rewards points or any airline frequent flier program.

Looking closer, Travelex does not cover Financial Default of the travel supplier unless you purchase a plan within their Early Purchase Window, within 15 days of your first payment towards a trip. The same is true for AIG Essential. However, AIG Plus and Preferred will cover Financial Default even if you don’t purchase your plan within an early window. This would solve the airline bankruptcy scenario, and for cheaper than World Nomads!

There is not a 180-day term limit like with World Nomads either:

Trip means a period of travel away from home to a Destination outside the Insured’s City of residence. The trip has a defined Departure Date and Return Date; and does not exceed 364 days.

*Note that I am looking at the Colorado plans! These terms may be different on a state-by-state basis. You should input your own details on their website to get accurate certificates.

I have decided to cancel my SafetyWing insurance, forego World Nomads, and purchase the AIG Plus Plan while using my Chase card as a backup (albeit a pretty crappy backup since it only covers the first 60 days of my travels). I’ll need to avoid purchasing travel with redeemed Chase rewards points. At the moment I don’t have many points so I’m not worried about it, but in the future that may be a major drawback.

Lingering Questions

• Before I pull the trigger on forsaking the special nomad insurance products and going with a regular insurer, I need to do a thorough sweep of the AIG plans to make sure I’m not overlooking something that is offered by SafetyWing that is not offered by AIG that would be relevant to me as an individual. At the moment I’m confused about AIG’s policies on Adventure Sports and hiking; I’ve emailed to ask about this.
  –> *UPDATE: Adventure Sports and Extreme Sports are automatically included in the Plus Plan, or can be added on to the Preferred Plan. Dangerous Activities are not covered, one of them being mountain climbing up to 6,000 meters, but that’s irrelevant to me. However, this is mainly about medical treatment for injuries sustained during Adventure Sports. The agent advised me that it may still be a good idea to pay for my Garmin’s Search and Rescue annual $40 add-on plan, because the types of life and death medical evacuations that are included with AIG are not the same thing as Search and Rescue. As a side note, I know that in many states, countries, and wilderness areas, Search and Rescue is a free public service. This is not always the case though and I’ve heard crazy stories of people getting stuck with a $50,000 helicopter bill.

• I also wonder if I can only purchase their plans while I’m still in my home country, before a trip begins. It says you must purchase a plan 24 hours “before departure” – is that departure from my home country, or departure from the last country I was in? Theoretically, if at month 7 I decide to stay abroad longer, can I purchase a brand new one that starts at month 8? That is one of the benefits of subscription services that you don’t always get with regular insurers, who want you to know the exact duration in advance and will not allow you to purchase after you’ve left your home country.
  –> *UPDATE: “24 hours before departure” means departure from your home state, BUT rather than buying a brand new plan at the end of your term, you can simply extend your existing plan as long as you’re still not exceeding the 364-day max. If I have a 7-month plan and want to extend for an 8th month, I could contact them to do this even though I’m already abroad.

At these price rates, perhaps a recurring subscription service is not necessary. Of course, the longer a nomad travels, the more mandatory a subscription travel insurance plan may ultimately become (I have been inputting 7 months as my plan term when gathering AIG quotes because I found out I have to return to the States for a wedding; originally when I bought a SafetyWing subscription, this wasn’t on the books and my trip was indefinite. I will re-start travel and begin a new insurance plan after the wedding). The less you are able to make brief visits home for primary care check-ups, the more a separate, weighty international health plan like Genki Resident or SafetyWing Nomad Health also becomes necessary in addition to a travel insurance plan. Therefore, going with a standard provider like AIG is still not a perfect all-encompassing solution for nomads. However, it is looking like the most logical option if one of my top concerns is Trip Protection. It is also affordable, it will allow me to book a long-term trip, and there are solid medical inclusions.

Obviously, everyone’s priorities are different. Folks who have pre-existing medical conditions, people over a certain age, or people who engage in more hazardous adventure sports are all going to need to evaluate providers and plans on a case-by-case basis to see what works for them. But if you’ve been traumatized like me and Trip Protection is important to you for unforeseen flight or tour cancellations on the supplier’s end, the typical nomad insurance providers and travel credit cards may not be your best bet.

If you’re a nomad, what do you do for insurance? I imagine most of us end up employing a combination of strategies for travel and health. I’d love to hear how you’ve handled the issue of Trip Protection specifically, in case there are other avenues I’m not aware of.

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