Travel Insurance After Departure

Looking for travel insurance but already left home? It is a condition of most travel insurance policies in the UK, that they are purchased before you leave home with a start date matching your UK departure. However there are many circumstances where travellers can find themselves already abroad with no travel insurance and it can be a real problem to arrange cover when this happens. The main reason that most travel insurance companies will not issue cover after departure, is that it is quite common for people to not bother with insurance, then encounter a problem overseas and try to put cover in place quickly in an attempt to make a fraudulent claim. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for those who genuinely find themselves in a situation with no cover.

IMPORTANT – PLEASE CAREFULLY READ ALL THIS INFORMATION

The ONLY travel insurance already abroad sales that we can make after you have left the UK (or EU) are the Single Trip Short Stay or Single Trip Long Stay versions (NOT Annual Multi-Trip) of the Navigator Silver, Navigator Gold & Navigator Diamond policies. There is a 25% supplement for After Departure policies – this will be added automatically when you select “After Departure Cover” on the Options page. We cannot offer cover if you are currently in, or planning to travel to, a country against FCDO advice. If the FCDO have travel advice in place, stating that they “advise against all or all but essential travel”, these policies are NOT valid.

All our other policies are INVALID if purchased after departure. During the buying process, you will be offered a tick box option for “ALREADY DEPARTED COVER”. You MUST tick this box. When you tick the box, it will automatically increase the cost by 25%, the After Departure supplement. If you are not offered this tick box option for Already Departed Cover, you are not buying the right policy and it will be INVALID. Navigator Silver, Navigator Gold & Navigator Diamond Single Trip or Long Stay are the ONLY three policies that will offer you this tick box.

NB – VERY IMPORTANT. If you are buying the policy online, you will be offered “Annual Multi-Trip, Single Trip and Long Stay”.  Ignore “Annual Multi-Trip” as these can’t be purchased after departure. The After Departure policy that you buy MUST match the overall duration of the trip that you are on. The “Single Trip” option is only for trips that do not exceed 62 days from the date that you left home. If your overall trip is going to be longer than 62 days from the date that you left home, you MUST select “Long Stay” option, otherwise the policy will not be valid.

When ticking the Already Departed Cover box, you are accepting the following special conditions for policies commenced after departure from the UK or your country of residence in the EU/EEA. Please read these conditions very carefully and make sure that you aware of the implications :

1 – Travel Insurance after leaving home cannot be dated the same day as purchased – it MUST be dated next day or later.

2 – If there has been a gap of more than 7 days, when you have been uninsured, between expiry of your last policy (if applicable) and the start of this policy, there will be a 14 day waiting period for the start of ILLNESS cover. However, this 14 day period starts counting from the day you actually buy the policy (therefore the issue date), so if you are able to buy it 14 days before you need cover to start, the 14 days will have lapsed by the time you need the medical cover.

This delay does NOT apply to ACCIDENT/INJURY cover, just ILLNESS. This condition will NOT apply, if there has been no gap between your previous cover and this one, or the gap is not more than 7 days. It will not apply if you only left the UK in the last 7 days.

3 – Policies started after departure will not cover claims arising from ANY known situation, INCLUDING any pre-existing medical conditions. There are NO exceptions to this condition.

4 – You are agreeing that you are not aware of ANY circumstances that are LIKELY to give rise to a claim.

5 – The 14 day Cooling-Off Period does NOT apply to policies started after departure, so once you have purchased it, it is NON-REFUNDABLE.

6 – The Navigator Silver, Navigator Gold & Navigator Diamond policies are ONLY available to people who are normally resident in the UK or EU. If your normal place of residence is not in the UK or EU, you cannot use these policies. Residents of some other countries may be able to use our Global Voyager policies (see Home Page) as these can also be started after departure, with the same conditions, but are available to a residents of many more countries.

7 –  The overall period of your trip outside your home country must not exceed the policy maximum for your age, including any period of insurance under this policy. In the event of a claim you will be required to provide evidence of the day you first left your home country. Maximum OVERALL durations for ages :

Ages 75-84 (Europe) – 62 days. Ages 75-84 (Worldwide) – 31 days. Ages 85 or over (Anywhere) – 31 days. Ages 60-74 (Anywhere) – 62 days. Ages 18-59 – 18 months. These are the maximum OVERALL durations, from when you left your home country until your return home. We cannot issue cover if your OVERALL duration away from home will be longer than the above limits.

If you are unsure about any of these conditions or the choice of policy, do not just buy a policy from this website. If in doubt, you must always contact us on 0161 973 6435 or by email and we will clarify the situation for you.

Navigator’s Cover

At Navigator Travel Insurance, we recognise that there are often occasions when this situation can arise and in many cases, we will be able to help. If you are a UK or EU resident and need to start a policy from overseas, simply follow the instructions above or call us on 0161 973 6435 or email us from this website and we will consider your circumstances. Each situation is considered on it’s merits and there is no hard and fast rule where we can state categorically that we can cover you, but in an attempt to clarify, we have detailed certain situations below, where we may be able to help and others where we will not.

If you have been living and/or working overseas for a number of years and you are arranging travel insurance policies back to back, we cannot help. If your normal place of residence is now overseas, you cannot use our policies. You need to be paying monthly private health insurance rates in the country where you reside, which are significantly more expensive than travel insurance. In this situation, you are no longer considered to be travelling, you are living abroad.

Extend Your Policy

If the travel insurance policy that you left the UK with has lapsed because you forgot to extend it, or because the insurer will not extend durations, we may be able to help, though it will depend on how long you have been out of the UK for in total.

It is quite common for people to inadvertently take out unsuitable policies. For instance you may have left the UK on a long stay trip with an Annual Multi-Trip policy, not realising that the maximum duration for an individual trip on one of these is 31 or 45 days. We can often help in these circumstances.

We often get requests from people who have been working temporarily overseas and insured by their employer or by organisations such as BUNAC. At the end of their work period they decide to go off travelling independently before returning to the UK and find that the insurer who has been covering them cannot extend cover once the employment contract is over. We can often help with these, as the person is clearly and genuinely travelling, not taking up residency abroad.

Get in Touch

Some people simply forget to arrange cover, or thought that someone else had done it on their behalf, and suddenly realise that they have arrived at their destination with no travel insurance cover. We can usually issue cover in this situation.

Travel insurance policies issued after departure always exclude any claim that arises from any situation, illness, theft etc, that predates the date of inception of the policy. This seems obvious, but it is emphasised to ensure that it is understood that insurance cannot be arranged retrospectively or backdated in any way and claims will not be considered, if the incident or illness giving rise to the claim predates the policy issue.