Travel insurance
Cancellation, lost luggage, repatriation: the supplement to basic health insurance when abroad.
Why this matters
Two weeks before departure your child breaks an arm, and the booked family holiday falls through – without cancellation cover, the cancellation costs stay entirely with you. Incidents while travelling get even more expensive: abroad, basic insurance pays at most double what the same treatment would have cost in Switzerland. For a hospital stay in countries like the USA or Canada, that is nowhere near enough, and medical repatriation to Switzerland is not included in it at all.
Travel insurance is voluntary in Switzerland. It is particularly important for families, for early-booked and expensive trips, and for destinations with high healthcare costs. Note the division of labour: medical costs abroad belong to health and supplementary insurance, cancellation and luggage to travel insurance – and the credit card sometimes covers parts of this. It is precisely these interfaces that need clarifying, so that you are neither doubly insured nor not at all.
What you get out of it
Cancellation, luggage, repatriation: the best weeks of the year without financial risk.
Annual cover instead of single-trip policies — usually cheaper from the second trip onwards.
A worldwide emergency helpline, around the clock.
What we take care of for you
- Checking what your basic insurance and credit card already cover
- Comparison of single-trip and annual travel insurance
- Inclusion of cancellation costs and assistance cover
- Help with reporting claims after your trip
The advice is free for you — we are remunerated by the insurance companies through brokerage commissions and will disclose these on request.
Tips from our consultations
What we tell our clients time and again – free of charge, even before the first meeting.
Many credit cards include cancellation cover, and some health insurance supplements cover emergencies abroad. If you blindly take out travel insurance, you quickly pay twice. A quarter of an hour’s check before booking saves premium year after year.
Cancellation cover only takes effect once the policy has been taken out. If you put the insurance off until shortly before departure, you are not covered for an illness that occurs earlier. The safest approach is to take out the cover on the same day you book the trip.
Never organise a hospital transfer or repatriation on your own initiative – contact your insurer’s emergency centre first, because without a guarantee of payment you risk being left with the bill. Save the number in your phone before departure and take your policy number with you.
A cancellation is only paid if the reason is covered and documented – for example with a medical certificate from the day you called the trip off. Cancel the trip as soon as the reason is certain: if you wait too long, you may end up carrying the meanwhile higher cancellation fees yourself.