Trip Insurance at final payment?

In the past we were able to purchase trip insurance (medical/cancellation) at the date of final payment. That was fine. The company we used in the past now requires purchase of trip insurance at the time of making a deposit.

Are there reputable independent insurance companies that allow you to purchase trip insurance at time of final payment?

TIA

In the past we were able to purchase trip insurance (medical/cancellation) at the date of final payment. That was fine. The company we used in the past now requires purchase of trip insurance at the time of making a deposit.

 

Are there reputable independent insurance companies that allow you to purchase trip insurance at time of final payment?

 

TIA

I'd suggest that you *call* www.TripInsuranceStore.com (or another broker).

The deadlines for purchasing travel insurance often depend upon the precise type(s) of coverage that one desires.

Also see the Travel Insurance section of CruiseCritic:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=635

GC

In the past we were able to purchase trip insurance (medical/cancellation) at the date of final payment. That was fine. The company we used in the past now requires purchase of trip insurance at the time of making a deposit.

 

 

 

Are there reputable independent insurance companies that allow you to purchase trip insurance at time of final payment?

 

 

 

TIA

Nationwide and others.

Check out insuremytrip.com and compare policies. The only rule we've encountered is that the policy must be purchased within 10 to 21 days after initial deposit if we want the pre-existing condition waiver. Otherwise purchase almost up to day of departure is allowed.

Check out insuremytrip.com and compare policies. The only rule we've encountered is that the policy must be purchased within 10 to 21 days after initial deposit if we want the pre-existing condition waiver. Otherwise purchase almost up to day of departure is allowed.

There are several companies (e.g., Nationwide) that include PEC waivers if purchased before final payment).

I have found too many choices on "insuremytrip", "tripinsurance" gives 10 and that's enough choice for me.

Check out insuremytrip.com and compare policies. The only rule we've encountered is that the policy must be purchased within 10 to 21 days after initial deposit if we want the pre-existing condition waiver. Otherwise purchase almost up to day of departure is allowed.

I also use insuremytrip dot com. Other things that require purchase soon after deposit to be included are Cancel for Any Reason, Financial Default, having Medical and/or Dental coverage be primary instead of secondary, or Common Carrier Accidental Death. Not all policies have these requirements, but many do.

I have found too many choices on "insuremytrip", "tripinsurance" gives 10 and that's enough choice for me.

Depends on the trip....insuremytrip only had 4 available for my world cruise.

You only need to insure what you have paid for so start by insuring the amount of the deposit and just increase the amount as you pay it. You will still be covered for our existing etc

You only need to insure what you have paid for so start by insuring the amount of the deposit and just increase the amount as you pay it. You will still be covered for our existing etc

Right. Many (most?) policies work like this.

So the initial insurance cost can be quite low, as it is just to cover the amount of the deposit.

(One needs to be sure to call and update/increase the coverage as additional charges are incurred. But usually the largest "cost" is that final/full payment, which is often much later.)

Our policies (insurer is Travel Insured) also allow one to transfer the coverage if one cancels the insured trip without any loss, under most circumstances.

We can transfer the coverage to a different trip as long as it's [something like - not exact] within 2 years of when we first started the policy.

We've done this a few times, which meant that the "early coverage" costs weren't lost after all.

This is especially useful to us because we often book far in advance to get preferred suites (or lower rates in some cases), but 1-2+ years in advance, DH isn't always so sure about his work schedule, or we may have found a different trip that overlaps time-wise, etc.

GC

You only need to insure what you have paid for so start by insuring the amount of the deposit and just increase the amount as you pay it. You will still be covered for our existing etc

I do this as well. However, I got wonder-does paying incrementally increase the total cost?

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What used to be CSA still has a pre-exist waiver at final payment policy.

https://www.generalitravelinsurance.com/

I do this as well. However, I got wonder-does paying incrementally increase the total cost?

 

 

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It does not increase the final/total insurance cost for the types of policies we purchase.

GC

What used to be CSA still has a pre-exist waiver at final payment policy.

https://www.generalitravelinsurance.com/

I just bought CSA and learned after reading info that it is a secondary policy for medical. This means you have to submit to primary carrier first (Medicare in our case), then any other (AARP in our case), then to CSA which will pay what is left. What this means is that there is a lot of paperwork to do and likely a period of time until you get paid. For us the CSA policy cost a bit less than most of the other carriers and most likely because it is a secondary insurer. Don’t know for sure if the others were primary policies or not as I decided to keep the CSA. We are doing the NE/ Bermuda cruise and since most ports are in US Medicare would likely cover any medical costs anyway.

Just something of which to be aware in case quick repayment would be important to you.

Yes, secondary coverage is often the reason that rates are lower than other policies. It is really important to be sure that you are getting everything that you want when you use one of the comparison sights. I tend to try to compare everything to the Travel Guard Gold which has most of the coverages that I want.

Yes, secondary coverage is often the reason that rates are lower than other policies. It is really important to be sure that you are getting everything that you want when you use one of the comparison sights. I tend to try to compare everything to the Travel Guard Gold which has most of the coverages that I want.

This "comparison", which can be critical, is a big reason we continue to recommend that someone exploring travel insurance CALL a broker (we use www.TripInsuranceStore.com )..

Especially for those unfamiliar with travel insurance, or just unfamiliar with *certain* types/clauses, there is no substitute to having someone explain it, and also compare/contrast it to other policies and clauses.

That's how we learned a huge amount fairly quickly. But even so, there continued to be certain situations where "something else" needed to be considered (or sometimes, it even turned out that we didn't need any insurance at all, once they went through some questions with us, etc.).

It's one thing if one "overpays" for a policy, or has some features one doesn't really need. That's obviously wasteful.

But it's entirely another thing, and *very* unfortunate, if one does NOT have a specific type of coverage one needed, whether or not one realized or thought they had that coverage.

"Learning the hard way" can be extremely expensive, so it's worth a phone call or two.

GC

Thank you for this information and so many options to consider. GG, are you a Travel Insurance broker? Are all Trip Insurance policies transferable?

Thank you for this information and so many options to consider. GG, are you a Travel Insurance broker? Are all Trip Insurance policies transferable?

If you meant "GC" (us), nope, we are just avid travelers.

First, I have no idea about whether other or how many insurers or policies can be transferred the way ours can. (Note that I don't even know if other policy types from Travel Insured can be. The type that *we* always get *can* be, and we have done that several times.)

We learned about "travel insurance" here on CruiseCritic during the months we were planning for DH's first cruise. (I had cruised before, some time ago, and loved it.)

It was to be our first "big trip", a celebration of a major birthday and also a pre-retirement celebration.

So we were splurging a bit, especially given that this was to be the first "real" vacation, rather than weekends before/after business trips, etc., or just weekends away.

We were taking a cruise in a nice suite, and also adding about a week of luxury hotel stays, so it was a big deal for us.

I called TripInsuranceStore based upon recommendations here, and they (Steve, especially) were VERY helpful in not only answering our questions but also asking us questions to narrow down the policies they'd recommend.

Less than two weeks before we were to leave home... DH had a medical emergency, and everything was cancelled. (TIS folks were terrific in reminding us what we had to do, including officially cancelling everything, so there'd be no delayed increase in losses, which the insurer probably wouldn't cover, etc.)

The next few months, our only travel was to medical appointments, treatments, emergency rooms, etc. Thank goodness, DH is almost totally recovered, and he dodged a permanent disability.

Yes, we *could* have afforded the lost non-refundable payments, but it turned out we were very "comforted" during the stress by knowing that "we won't have to pay all over again to take this trip later".

When we belatedly filed the insurance docs (a few months later, NOT "too late" in terms of deadlines!), Travel Insured had a check for everything in our hands about 2 weeks after they received the final docs.

We suspect that was fast in part because we had coverage for pre-existing conditions, so they didn't need to sort through months of previous medical records, etc.

There was no nonsense from them at any point, and that has been our experience with several other claims, including one other large claim (although that first one remains the largest).

In any event, that made us realize how important it all was, and how fortunate that we had a good policy from a good insurer, and we felt that TIS folks guided us very well, as we were previously totally clueless about travel insurance.

Anyway, from that point on, I kept asking, for each trip, "What about if X happens? Or Y?"

And they also asked questions, so we'd know if we should buy A or B policy or add C coverage or such.

There's no extra cost, as the insurers pay the commission to the brokers, not the traveler, so to us, all of that Q&A or guidance is just perfect.

(They even helped us realize for one trip why we did NOT need a policy; saved us money, cost them the commission!)

Steve also "caught" a mistake we were about to make shortly after that first claim, because he had gotten familiar with our situation. Had we purchased a policy "on line", we would have purchased a policy that violated the terms; we were still learning... a LOT!

We were able to cancel a trip and get our deposit back, and several months later, we started again with the planning...

My main point is that it is SO difficult to be able to read and compare ALL of the "fine print" from a variety of policies... why not ask some experts?

Also, apparently TripInsuranceStore handles fewer insurers than some other brokers, because they "vet" them, in terms of paying claims (and I don't know whatever else).

The policies we choose aren't the least expensive that are offered (through TIS or elsewhere), but they meet our needs, especially in terms of "pre-existing conditions" and also our desire to have "Cancel For Any Reason" (CFAR) coverage. Not everyone needs that latter, which does cost extra.

We owe a LOT (including $$$$) to those here on CruiseCritic, when we were "learning" back in mid 2013, and we just try to pass it along.

Good luck, and enjoy your travels!

GC

I strongly recommend Insuremyluxurytravel.com - Chuck. He will explain everything and won't charge.

Typically we get trip insurance within 14 days of paying the deposit but ONLY for the amount of deposit. When we make final payment, then we up the amount of the trip to the real cost. One proviso is that when I did this for our May 2018 cruise, I was told that we could not reduce the amount of the cruise (we are old enough that premiums become pretty high) unless we wanted to forego the precondition clause. Which we did not!

For a trip I just booked for next April I used Divers Alert Network coverage. A friend of ours who was a diver recommended them to us years ago. For a minimal membership they give you basic coverage. But I discovered in booking my insurance for this April 2019 cruise, full "elite" coverage was so inexpensive that I just paid the full amount.

One limit with them is that they won't give you coverage if you are booking more than a year ahead. In this case I wasn't.

I suggest people look into the Diver's Network. The basic membership (as I recall) is about $40 a year, but for full coverage of an upcoming trip, the charge is much less. You do NOT have to be a diver to join.

Mura

I also use insuremytrip dot com. Other things that require purchase soon after deposit to be included are Cancel for Any Reason, Financial Default, having Medical and/or Dental coverage be primary instead of secondary, or Common Carrier Accidental Death. Not all policies have these requirements, but many do.

We used this company for a 48 day cruise after learning about it here on CC. Saved a lot of money as others charged more per day. (Can't remember name of owner but you can talk to him when you call) told me that the company I was considering charged less for longer cruises because the main risk is trip cancellation. Huge savings with that company in the comparison. Fortunately we did not have to make a claim but the overall cost was a great savings. Getting ready to check them out again for our upcoming O cruise.

If you travel frequently consider annual travel insurance. We use Alliance. Their response and rapid payment for coverage secondary to Kaiser was outstanding. We had a check for full coverage of the balance, including Kaiser's deductible, within 3 weeks after submitting the claim.

We are doing a combination type of insurance our next trip. Using the Sapphire Reserve included insurance for our cancellation coverage and buying an annual medical policy which we don't have to do until just before we leave home. Only covers out of the US but, is for a year and extremely reasonable so will cover future trips. Insuremytrip.com is the best IMHO. Very personal and knowledgeable responses from Steve, the owner and all of the staff. Recommend highly. No extra charges, only pay for the coverage.

We are doing a combination type of insurance our next trip. Using the Sapphire Reserve included insurance for our cancellation coverage and buying an annual medical policy which we don't have to do until just before we leave home. Only covers out of the US but, is for a year and extremely reasonable so will cover future trips. Insuremytrip.com is the best IMHO. Very personal and knowledgeable responses from Steve, the owner and all of the staff. Recommend highly. No extra charges, only pay for the coverage.

If it's the Steve many of us know, he's the owner of www.TripInsuranceStore.com and NOT "that other one".

GC

If it's the Steve many of us know, he's the owner of www.TripInsuranceStore.com and NOT "that other one".

 

GC

Thanks GC, of course I mean Trip Insurance Store. My error.