MegèveSki

Insurance

Insurance..... boring, but important. Not only is it boring to review various policies and try to work out the difference between them (the problem of being a lawyer I guess - you can't help yourself), but sometimes you don't even know about things you need to look for. Let me explain.....

I'm talking about ski trip insurance for a 4 month trip, which normally means looking at "seasonnaire" policies. The forums at Natives were an excellent starting point as there were lots of posts about seasonnaire insurance and the advantage is you get to benefit from other people's research and experiences. As well as getting suggestions for who to get our insurance from, I picked up a very interesting "problem" - home visits. Why are home visits a problem? Well, it seems that when you purchase a long stay policy, in most cases the policy will state that the insurance terminates either on the date specified or if you return to your country of origin, whichever happens sooner. So our plans to come back to the UK in February to attend my cousin's wedding meant that a policy with this type of provision would have been inadvertantly terminated as soon as we arrived back home, leaving us without cover for the rest of our trip.

Unfortunately, the person at Natives who identified this problem hadn't identified a policy which would deal with it. So I had to take up the challenge myself.

I checked the policy details (yawn) of all the main ski insurance providers that had been recommended to me (DogTag, www.ski-insurance.co.uk, and the policy offered by Ski Club of Great Britain) and my current insurer (annual policy with Fogg - good because you get a Medicard to show proof of insurance) but none of them offered the possibility of a "home visit" during the insurance period. In fact, most of the insurers I spoke to just said "we can't help" and Fogg told me the only way round as to take out a separate policy for each part of my trip - fine if you only have one home visit planned, but what if you subsequently decide you need to come back for some reason?

I have now purchased policies for both of us from InsureAndGo (the same people as those behind www.skiinsurance.co.uk (different to www.ski-insurance.co.uk!). This allows us up to 2 "home visits" for an additional premium of £12.70. Mine is an "Adventurer" (ie backpacker!) policy and cost £94, Len's is the "standard" one because he's too old to be a backpacker ;) and cost £110. The cover looks comparable to those offered by the other companies, and includes cover for baggage and personal money, so the quote was reasonably competitive too. Offpiste is covered. Heliskiing can be added for about £20 for a week's cover, and then can be done later by ringing up and telling them the dates you want the cover for.

Overall. I was pretty impressed with the staff at InsureAndGo. On each of the 3 occasions I called the customer service line, the staff were familiar with the policies and could immediately refer me to the relevant section to explain which ski activities were or were not covered.

Unfortunately, we do not have cover for "ski flying"........ shame.