Holiday insurance Q (35 days)

[DodgyGeezer]

Hi all... we're shortly off on a longish holiday in the US, 35 days. Our standard travel insurance covers us for 30 days so we have to extend it. The question is whether we can get a weeks insurance for the rump of the holiday or doesn't it work like that?

[omniflow]

Your current travel insurance provider may or may not allow you to extend the period of cover for a fee, which will probably be reasonable.

Ours didn't, but it took a while to figure that one out. It was with Aviva, but via First Direct. You could extend it if you were with HSBC, but not with First Direct (which is owned by HSBC). We ended up planning our trip around the 31 day limit, mainly because it was convenient to do so.

I think someone else posting on here tried a similar thing to what you're proposing and discovered that all (mainstream and therefore affordable) UK travel insurance policies require you to be in the UK at the start of the cover period, so you can't have one that starts part way through your holiday.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

omniflow said:

I think someone else posting on here tried a similar thing to what you're proposing and discovered that all (mainstream and therefore affordable) UK travel insurance policies require you to be in the UK at the start of the cover period, so you can't have one that starts part way through your holiday.

There are insurers that offer "already departed" cover, but of course they want to guard against people travelling with no insurance, then having an issue (let's say a fall and a twisted knee) so suddenly buying insurance on a Monday with the intent of claiming the incident happened on Tuesday and going to the hospital on Tuesday.

So they all exclude claims for a period prior to cover starting, maybe 7 days. So if you can find one, it'll be fine for you as you have alternative insurance covering you for the first 30 days.

A firm called Voyager used to do it, plus others.

[mikef]

My daughter took out “already travelling” insurance with True Traveller when she was studying in Latin America and wanted to travel the Americas. Didn’t need to claim, so can’t comment on that aspect

[StupidDecisions]

Used True Traveller in the past as well. Reasonable prices but never had to claim.

[DodgyGeezer]

well after quite a while on the phone to the current insurers (Barclays bank account benefit) we're covered for an extra £50. Useful to know about the other companies though