When travelling abroad it can take a lot of organising, what with arranging what to pack, ordering currency and remembering to pack your toothbrush. However another thing needs to be taken in to consideration and that is travel insurance. It is important to make sure you include travel insurance in your to do list.

The reason it is an important thing to consider is because should you ever become unfortunate and require medical care whilst you are abroad, you may end up with a very huge financial burden, for example if you were struck down with a heart attack in Spain with out any travel insurance it could cost you around £35,000, or if you where in the USA and you fractured your hip with out cover it would cost £22,531. Whilst reading this you may scoff and think to yourself that you are in good health. However in life there are always unexpected incidents waiting to happen, so it is always better to be safe than sorry.

However there are around 60 countries that offer reciprocal healthcare arrangements with the UK, but they mainly provide emergency treatments.

So for example if you were in Australia and you needed to pay a visit to casualty you may be faced with a bill, even though Australia is one of the 60 countries that are part of the reciprocal healthcare arrangement with the UK. The treatment may have been free but you may have to pay for your ride to the hospital, or other charges. But should you find yourself in a country that is not part of the reciprocal arrangement with the UK, the bills could be so huge that for many it could make them bankrupt.

Travel insurance not only just covers medical expenses; it can also cover the loss of luggage or other pieces of personal belongings such as passports, money, and repatriation costs and cancelled or delayed flights.. Also some travel insurance policies may include any damages you may have caused towards others, so with all the potential expenses that can occur whilst away it can help to be prepared and to make sure you have a very comprehensive cover before you set off so you are ready for anything.

However when it comes to paying for travel insurance the bank Alliance & Leicester found that many consumers pay over £1.3 billion more than they need to on travel insurance every year. This appears to be odd because travel insurance tends to appear to be rather cheap, with some policies that cost around £25. So why are consumers overspending excessively?

This maybe because around 60% of consumers take the easy route and use travel agents to arrange their insurance at the same they are booking their holiday. However that option may seem like the most simple but it can some times cost the consumer around five times the cost of buying it independently. In some holiday packages travel insurance is promoted as a free add-on with the package, but we know that in this life nothing is ever really free so the reality is that you will be paying for it somewhere along the line.

Now that there are many online travel companies this can make it easier for the consumer to make sure they find the best insurance deal for them. Things to look out for when looking for travel insurance is the excess payment, which is when you pay a set amount towards any claim that is pre-determined between you and the travel insurance company. This could be a standard (mandatory) amount or it could be voluntary, meaning that the higher the excess you take, the lower your premium.

To make thing easier there are many price comparison webpage’s that can help you see what offers are there and make comparisons so that the experience of looking for a good deal is not so long and laborious.