Best travel insurance for Aussies travelling overseas

We’ve been preparing for two international trips so far this year. At the moment, we’re in Singapore for four days as a family, and then in February, I am solo travelling to Istanbul for a week.

We’re diving back into a travel experience that feels almost foreign to us after two years of being almost solely focused on Australian travel.

It’s exciting, but I’ll admit slightly terrifying, especially for my solo mission to Istanbul. It’s been 15 years since I’ve visited such a foreign and exotic city on my own.

As someone who has travel as a constant companion, this slight trepidation I feel is so weird. I have not felt it since I was 21 and taking off for my first overseas adventure.

I feel like I’m understanding our first-time adventurer readers more deeply at the moment.

Travel insurance is a priority for us in preparing for our trip. I’ve been researching to find the best travel insurance for Australians travelling overseas and I feel confident I’ve found it, which I’m happy to share with you here and perhaps save you the time yourself.

Although, I recommend you do your own due diligence. What is the best travel insurance for us, may not be for you. But this is a good starting point for you.

A word of advice when researching the best Australian travel insurance

Don’t wreck your head checking every travel insurance company to find the deal of the century. After the fifth one, I’d had enough. I had a pretty general picture of the coverage I was getting and the approximate price, so once I felt like I had found my comfort level around that, I quit looking.

Here’s what I used to work out which travel insurance providers to look more closely at:

• Who have we used before? We’ve used, and been happy with, CoverMore and World Nomads. So both of them were on my research list.
• Who have you heard of? Recommendations from trusted sources are worth checking out. We’d recently partnered with World2Cover to share the opening of their travel insurance in Australia. I was really happy with what I’d researched about them, especially that children get free travel insurance with them. So I added them to the research list.
• Search comparison sites: I used Comparethemarket.com.au to compare travel insurance companies. I only used them after I had researched the three companies above as they were my trusted travel insurance companies. So I wanted to compare new ones to them. This was my strategy to save time researching individual providers, because if they did not match up to them, then I could end the research task early.

If you booked your travels with your credit card, you may be entitled to travel insurance that comes with that. Be careful to read the fine print to ensure you’re adequately protected.

There are unlimited number of travel insurance companies in Australia, the three we share and recommend on our blog at this time are World2Cover, World Nomads and CoverMore.

From my research, these are the best three in Australia taking in price, coverage and credibility. Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission if you purchase travel insurance via them.

Consider your travel style and circumstances

Here are a list of questions to consider researching to find the best travel insurance when travelling overseas. Domestic travel will be a little different.

For today, we’re looking at the best travel insurance for Australians travelling overseas, but if you are not an Aussie these will still apply to you and World Nomads mentioned below is a travel insurance provider you can use.

• Where are you travelling to?
• How are you travelling? Flights, rental cars etc. Required coverage will change depending on this
• How safe do you feel this region is?
• Who’s travelling with you? Family, pets …
• What activities will you be doing? Skiing and adventurous activities
• Will you be travelling multiple times through the year? (a multi-trip or annual policy may work best for you)
• What equipment will you be taking that may require extra insurance? camera, computer equipment etc.
• What’s the cancellation policy? Weigh this up with what you’re spending on your travels and what the exclusions are.
• What excess do you want to pay? Check the premium prices for various amounts. Make a decision based upon your own risk comfort zones

Be sure to check:

• Price
• Coverage
• The fine print
• Conditions
• Excess
• Individual luggage items

Key features of the three Australian travel providers

World Nomads Travel Insurance

Website:

• Credibility – they’ve been in the market for some time
• World Nomads are not restricted to Australians only. All travellers around the world can use them
• Easy quote form to fill out
• Inclusions and coverage easy to read
• I loved how World Nomads included coverage for alternative therapies! ($500)
• 24-hour assistance
• World nomads cancellation costs are unlimited
• Unlimited medical for World Nomads
• Credit card repayment options for full-time students
• They have a lot of extra coverage options for things you wouldn’t normally consider like child psychology after trauma

What I don’t like:

• Has a fixed excess price of $200
• Only $500 dental (in comparison to the other two)

CoverMore Travel Insurance

Website:

• Australia’s biggest travel insurance provider
• Good reputation and credibility
• 24-hour assistance, but I had to dig through the PDS to find it. Put it on the main website!
• Unlimited for emergency medical and dental for Covermore.
• Flexibility with tailor made policies. You can adjust excess, add in cancellation costs, and rental cars. Although this may mean higher premiums than the other companies if you need these. They are covered in the standard policies with the other two. I found World2Cover and World Nomads were still cheaper.

What I don’t like:

• I did not like how I had to dig around in the PDS to find the coverage limits for individual baggage items. Much easier to find with the other two.
• Does not include car rental or trip cancellation costs

World2Cover Travel Insurance

Website: http://World2Cover.com.au

• Only a new travel insurance provider in Australia
• Very simple form to fill out
• Backed by a solid company in Japan
• Not a requirement for me, but World2Cover includes pet coverage + travel agent fees
• 24-hour assistance
• Optional ski coverage
• Unlimited cover for cancellation fees if the unexpected happens
• Loyalty discounts for your next trip

What I didn’t like

To be honest, I didn’t really find anything. Although, I have not experienced a claim through World2cover before so can’t speak from that angle.

With World Nomads and CoverMore I have and it was fine.

Note – Interesting discovery

I discovered something very interesting just before publishing this post. I went back to double-check the quotes and included coverage for each travel insurance provider.

Both World Nomads and CoverMore’s quote price had increased. I’ll show you the difference below. I noticed CoverMore coverage now included car rental excess, which it didn’t before, so this might be why it was such a huge increase. BUT, you can get the rental car excess through the other two policies at a much cheaper overall premium so that makes CoverMore not even in the race.

I double checked World2Cover and the premium had not risen at all. In fact, for my solo trip it had decreased!! Perhaps, this might be connected to my cookies and that I had purchased insurance before so received a loyalty price. I’m not sure!

Very very interesting. It increases my trust in World2Cover and decreases it in the other two. Just so you know, we have no monetary affiliation with World2Cover. They don’t even have an affiliate program.

Best family travel insurance for Australian travelling overseas

Remember, this is what I discovered was the best family travel insurance for us travelling to Singapore. It may be different for your circumstances, what coverage you require, and where you are travelling to so please do your own research to compare travel insurance companies in Australia.

Cost of family travel insurance for Australians travelling to Singapore:

What we were looking for:

• 6-day coverage for a family of four.
• No extra baggage coverage – limitations for all companies suited us
• No adventurous activities
• No car rental coverage required (although it comes standard with World2Cover and World Nomads)
• Not a large cancellation costs to worry about

World Nomads: 

• $131 (with $200 excess)
• This had increased to $132 on my second check

CoverMore:

• $131 with $100 excess
• $162 with no excess.
• On second check, it increased to $160 with $100 excess

World2Cover:

• $84.60 with $100 excess
• $99.60 with no excess

World Nomads and World2Cover give you two options. I compared the top option for both. There was only less than $10 difference for World2Cover so it was better to go with the bigger one as it offered more individual item cover. There was more than $30 price difference between World Nomads two premiums, so it’s worth investigating more for yourself to see if their top cover is worth getting for your situation.

Best solo travel insurance for Australian travelling overseas

Remember, this is what I discovered was the best solo travel insurance for myself travelling to Istanbul. It may be different for your circumstances, what coverage you require, and where you are travelling to so please do your own research to compare travel insurance companies in Australia.

World2cover:

• $81.16  – no excess
• On my second check, this had decreased to $66.16

World Nomads

• $96.50 with $200 excess
• On second check, it had increased to $97.50

CoverMore:

• $90 with $100 excess
• $106 no excess
• This had increased to $93 with $100 excess and $109 for no excess

Note, if you are a non-Australian traveller, we recommend World Nomads. They cover travellers no matter their country of origin. Their convenience, coverage and price makes them a clear winner in our eyes.

Have you found any other travel insurance companies in Australia to compare? Any insights or tips to add?