When students get admission to a foreign university of their choice, they are bound to feel excited thinking about all the wonderful things they will be experiencing soon. However, they might suffer from a bit of nervousness as well.
The thought of spending a couple of months or years in a country that an individual has never been to could be daunting. While pursuing their higher education in a foreign university, a student would stay away from family, and there would be limited support. While making plans to study abroad, it would be a good idea to reach out to a study abroad consultant.
While studying abroad, a foreign student should be ready to deal with adverse situations like suffering from a medical emergency, loss of documents, accident, disruption of study because of some reason, and other factors. A foreign student should invest in travel insurance to effectively deal with situations like these and come out of them.
How To Find The Most Suitable Travel Insurance
While choosing travel insurance, there are certain things a student needs to keep in mind. They must ensure that the insurance they are opting for will help secure their stay in a foreign country and benefit them in different ways.
Type
Before choosing a travel insurance policy, the student must check what type of policy it is. Travel insurance policies are of different types, including annual and single-trip policies. The latter proves to be a good option for those planning to take just one trip throughout the year. The former is designed for students traveling back and forth multiple times a year.
Duration
While choosing a particular policy, the student must ensure that it will last until they finish their course. For example, if they are about to pursue a MBBS program in Canada, they should opt for travel insurance coverage that lasts two years or more.
Coverage
For a student about to travel abroad, knowing the kind of coverage travel insurance provides is very important. The more the number of things the insurance covers, the better. Apart from trip cancellation, travel insurance should cover emergency evacuation and medical expenses. The student must analyze their trip carefully and check if the insurance policy needs to cover something specific.
Claim Limit
Before investing in a travel insurance policy, an international student should make it a point to get proper information on the policy’s claim limit. It can be best described as the maximum amount of money the insurer can pay for a claim. The student must ensure that the claim limit provided is good enough to cover all their needs.
Online Reviews
When a student is unsure about the credentials of the company that offers them a variety of travel insurance policies, they should try to find out more about the company. One of the simplest ways to do this is to go through reviews posted online. Most Indian students studying abroad have availed of travel insurance policies, so one would find many reviews online.
Content
Reading everything printed on a travel insurance policy is extremely important, but very few people do this. When a travel insurance policy is presented to an international student as a document, they should read it word for word and figure out if they agree to all the terms and conditions mentioned on it.
Exclusions
No travel policy covers anything. However, an international student doesn’t look for many things in a policy either. What a foreign student needs from a travel insurance policy could differ greatly from what a businessman expects. Before purchasing a travel insurance policy, the student should carefully learn everything it doesn’t include.
Additional Coverage
Many overseas travel insurance companies offer additional coverage options. If a student gets these options without paying a premium price, they should go for it. Some additional coverage options these companies offer are adventure tourism, political evacuation, and terrorism.
Pricing
When a student is about to buy a travel insurance policy for the first time, they might have many questions about its pricing or costs. If they come across a travel insurance policy that seems a little expensive, they should speak to somebody who bought that insurance in the past and ask them whether it was worth it. It would also be advisable to compare the pricing of the travel insurance policies offered by different companies.
Structure
Certain travel insurance policies are designed for students. A student who is about to travel abroad for their studies, therefore, should spend some time going through the details of the different policies that are offered to them and figure out which is the one that would work the best for them. They must ensure that the travel insurance policy they will pay for has been designed for international students.
Country
While opting for a travel insurance abroad policy, students should consider the country they are traveling to. For instance, if they are about to travel to Canada, they could contact a Canada-based insurance company that offers travel insurance coverage to international students. They could also consider an Indian insurance company with offices in the country they are about to travel to.
What a Travel Insurance Policy Should Cover
For an international student, an ideal travel insurance policy is one that covers all the things or incidents they could encounter while traveling abroad. Even though flights are super-fast, the journey from one country to another turns out to be longer than expected, and one could encounter several stumbling blocks in the process.
Buying a travel insurance policy should make a student feel highly safe and secure about their journey. Once students acquire a travel insurance policy, they must know that the coverage will cover any challenge or difficulty they encounter while traveling to their destination country.
Here are some of the things a travel insurance policy should cover for students traveling for studies to Canada:
Trip Cancellation
When traveling abroad, one of the biggest fears for an international student is the trip getting canceled for some reason. After booking the tickets, which are very expensive, no student would want to cancel their plans of moving to a foreign country on a particular date. However, certain situations could leave them with no option but to cancel their trip.
International students should prepare for such an event beforehand by investing in a travel insurance policy covering trip cancelation. If and when they decide to cancel the trip, the policy should cover the expenses or losses involved. The best student travel insurance policies designed for international students cover trip cancellation.
Lost Belongings
Traveling abroad makes the risk of losing one’s luggage or belongings much higher. While such cases are rare domestically, every day, one comes across many social media posts in which international students share their ordeal of losing their precious belongings while traveling from one country to another.
While investing in travel insurance coverage, international students should check whether the company is willing to take responsibility for their belongings. An international student travels with several things, including important students. Losing such things would lead to a lot of trouble and inconveniences.
Medical Emergencies
When international students travel, they may fall sick or meet with an unfortunate incident. This would lead to them spending a lot of money on medical expenses. If the student has availed of a travel insurance policy that covers medical emergencies, they wouldn’t have to worry about these things.
When an international student contacts a company offering travel insurance policies, they must check whether they cover medical care. A large number of things come under the purview of medical care. An ideal travel insurance policy should also take into account emergency evacuation.
Additional Coverage
Since many companies offer travel insurance for students studying abroad, there are certain things some companies do to get a competitive advantage in the market. Offering additional coverage to international students is one such thing. These companies offer international students a few things that their competitors don’t.
Flight delays, trip interruption, personal liability, lost passports, and repatriation are some additional coverage offered by certain travel insurance policies. The more the number of things a policy covers, the higher its value becomes. International students should look at the additional coverage options offered to them and figure out whether they would be helpful to them in some way.
Theft
While traveling abroad, an international student is surrounded by many security measures. Despite that, there have been several instances of their belongings or a part of them getting stolen. Many notorious people specialize in stealing things during international flights or journeys.
If an international student’s laptop gets stolen while traveling from one country to another, they will have no option but to buy another. If they have a travel insurance policy to their name, the company will bear the expenses of the new laptop. Therefore, A travel insurance policy safeguards international students against thefts.
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