7 Best Travel Insurance Providers In Australia (Comparison)

Travelling to Europe or Bali to escape the brittle winter Australian weather? I am keeping it simple – because I have a ton of work to catch up on after the birth of my child – so I’m sticking with simple domestic weekend getaways to Byron and the Adelaide Hills.

But regardless of your destination, let me ask you a serious question – have you chosen the best travel insurance for your needs?

A holiday can lead to devastating financial bills – unless you’re covered for unexpected emergencies or inconveniences.

And if you catch a stomach bug, like my wife Irene did a couple of years ago (in Mexico City, of all places), you may be stuck with a hospital bill that makes you want to vomit.

Again.

Back then, our American Express Platinum Card covered the $11,400 medical bill. Comprehensive travel insurance is included as one of the perks, and we relied on it to trot around the globe.

Now that we’re parenting a toddler back in Australia and only take 1-2 family holidays per year, the $1750 annual fee didn’t seem like great value.

So I decided not to renew my Amex membership – but compare a few travel insurance providers, so I could buy it on an ad-hoc basis.

With that in mind, I present you with a comparison of the best travel insurance providers in Australia.

Before I unpack each insurance provider in detail, here are my controversial discoveries that these insurance providers don’t want you to know:

How I Tested The Travel Insurance Providers.

The biggest problem with choosing travel insurance is that they all appear the same. Nearly all provide the same combinations of single-trip or multiple-trip cover, with optional bolt-ons for specialty trips. Such as:

Moreover, each provider allows you to dial in the amount of cover you want, depending on your budget. For example, AllClear gives you three levels, with the main difference being the top amount of cover you get for things like luggage loss.

To make like-for-like cost comparison between different providers meaningful, I requested quotes from providers for three types of trip, common in Australia:

I then added up the costs to arrive at an average figure for each travel insurance provider.

I also assessed two main other areas: ease of claims and ease of signup.

1. AllClear Insurance.

Best travel insurance if you have a pre-existing medical condition.

What’s my biggest fear when travelling? It’s racking up a massive medical bill overseas – only to discover that I’m not covered because of an exemption, cleverly hidden deep in the fineprint.

My wife actually has some chronic conditions that have the potential to mess with our travels, which is why I rank AllClear as the best travel insurance option for us.

The downside? It’s more expensive than most other options. I requested a quote for a 1-month long trip from Sydney to NYC, and the total cost came at $493. This is $80 more than Zoom Insurance and $46 more than FastCover.

Signup is easy and seamless. It took me about 7 minutes to submit my documents and ontain my quote.

The claims process is the best of all providers in this review – but not perfect. AllClear outsources it to a 3rd party provider, and it gets under some people’s skin.

I personally haven’t had to make a claim, so I can’t speak to it from first-hand experience, but my impression from reading reviews is that AllClear mostly struggles with cases where the claim’s supporting documentation is in another language. Sometimes, the company simply stops responding.

Getting paid takes between 2-4 weeks. I would have preferred this to be quicker. Amex paid for my wife’s hospital bill in Mexico in under 2 weeks.

What I do like is that you get a personal claims assistant, who you can call back on their own phone line. This means you don’t have to call the main switchboard and get routed to a different person every time.

This one is easy to overlook, but it makes all the difference when making a claim.

Don’t know about you, but I don’t want my insurer to sounds like they’re doing me a favour when discussing a payout. I want to feel being cared for.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	5
Ease Of Claim	4
Ease Of Signup	5

2. Zoom Insurance.

Best overall travel insurance.

Zoom Insurance is underwritten by Lloyd’s of London. Yep, that company is not exactly a bunch of amateurs. This is a 230-year-old business that insures everything, from supertankers passing the Strait of Hormuz to old ladies flying to the annual crochet conference in Cyprus.

Applying for insurance is just as easy as it is with AllClear.

The interface is a bit more dated than AllClear’s, so expect it to take sllightly longer – about 7-10 minutes – to get your quote.

You get great, responsive customer service. If something goes wrong, you can submit your claim either by calling them or online. But unlike AllClear, Zoom doesn’t have 24 hour customer service – it’s definitely a weakness.

You get several tiers of coverage (comprehensive, standard, medical only international, domestic only and frequent traveller). Comprehensive is the pick of the bunch, but is (predictably) on the more pricey side.

The downside? The claiming process can be hit-and-miss. I’ve read a lot of reviews by people who mentioned 3-5 day gaps in communication from customer service.

I also don’t love the fact that they don’t cover costs resulting from issues caused by accommodation providers. So, if your hotel screws up your booking, you’re on your own.

Finally, unlike AllClear, Zoom doesn’t cover lost luggage. If your belongings get stolen at the airport or lost by the airline, you will have to pay for it out of your own pocket.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	4
Ease Of Claim	4
Ease Of Signup	5

3. Fast Cover.

Best for customising your policy.

Fast Cover’s party trick is unlimited cover for both medical emergencies and trip cancellations. Lost luggage cover is quite generous, at $15,000, as is the $50,000 cover for trip-disruption expenses.

Choice of coverage options is even more flexible than Zoom’s. You get specialist ski travel and cruise options, as well as an option to buy your travel insurance from overseas.

If that wasn’t enough customisation, you can buy add-on packs that cover you for specific activities:

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	3
Ease Of Claim	4
Ease Of Signup	4

4. Butter Insurance.

Best if you want cheap and cheerful travel insurance.

Good news – if you’re prone to medical accidents, Butter Insurance provides unlimited emergency medical and hospital coverage.

Bad news – luggage and personal effects coverage is capped at only $10,000. Which, if you travel with a high-end laptop and a few expensive pieces of clothing, you’ll exceed quickly.

Think of it as bare-bones essentials travel insurance. They were cheaper than Zoom and AllClear ($290 average quote). However, their insurance doesn’t include many types of cover that I’d consider essential – such as monkey bites in Thailand and broken bones in Bali.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	3
Ease Of Claim	4
Ease Of Signup	4

5. Covermore.

Decent alternative to Butter Insurance.

Covermore had a few rough years, with customer feedback falling steeply. In fact, there are currently 69 reviews of it on Google, with an average rating of 1.8 stars. Compared with the others, that’s abysmal.

This puts it into the same category as World2Cover. You can expect poor communication that looks like unanswered emails and promises of callbacks that never happen.

This is a shame, because Covermore’s quote was very competitive ($370) compared with Allclear and Zoom. But I’d hesitate recommending them until they sort out the claims process.

Nonetheless, it’s quite popular – and appears to be bundled with some of CBA’s travel products.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	3
Ease Of Claim	3
Ease Of Signup	4

6. World2Cover.

Decent alternative to Fast Cover.

Compared with other travel insurance providers, World2Cover offers a $10,000,000 legal liability cover – the highest of any other provider.

Like Fast Cover, World2Cover offers unlimited coverage for medical, cancellation and emergency expenses.

What worries me most is that the feedback they receive online is appalling.

I get that online reviews always tend to skew negative (happy customers are less likely to leave reviews, as they have better things to do), but World2Cover’s reputation is in a class of its own.

My point of view on it is as follows. A lot of the negativity is due to World2Cover’s particularly bureaucratic claims process – not (what can seem like) greedy intent to deny people their cover.

Unfortunately, it means a lot of people have their claims mistakenly denied, and have to go back-and-forth with the company to resolve the issue.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	3
Ease Of Claim	3
Ease Of Signup	3

7. Insure&Go.

Best specialist travel insurance.

Insure&Go is one of the cheapest travel insurance providers in this review.

My wife has used them twice when we visited Bali, and found their prices unbelievably cheap. I verified this by getting a quote for a 1-month holiday in Europe, and it came in at $380. Out-bloody-standing. This makes it 20% cheaper than World2Cover and 15% cheaper than Zoom Insurance.

What I don’t love is that they don’t cover you for pre-existing conditions.

This makes Insure&Go great for younger folks – if you’re older than 40 years of age, I recommend you go with AllClear instead.

Assessment Criteria	Score
Cost Of Cover	2
Ease Of Claim	2
Ease Of Signup	5

Why Do You Need Travel Insurance?

I watched an SBS News special recently that revealed Australians are a pretty risk-averse bunch – 86% of Aussie travellers have travel insurance cover when venturing abroad.

However, the remaining 14% expose themselves to significant levels of risk by travelling uninsured, and are most likely to be:

Andrew Hall, the Chief Executive Officer of Insurance Council of Australia, had a stark warning to those doubting the value of travel insurance:

That puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

Do You Need Travel Insurance To Go Skiing?

Short answer – hell yes.

Especially if you go off-piste.

Irene and I love anything related to the mountains (whether it’s driving, hiking, or skiing) – especially in Europe.

If you’re the same, remember that medical help in the mountains can be expensive – especially if you need an air ambulance.

With a few minor exceptions that you shouldn’t count on, you’re 100% liable for the cost of a helicopter rescue in countries like Austria, Germany, Italy and France.

Above: Irene and I skiing in Saalbach, Austria a couple of seasons ago.

If you need one to pluck you from the side of a mountain, you’ll pay about £100 (AU$165) for every minute the helicopter is in the air – this includes the time it spends getting to you.

A short hop to the local medical centre will take about 30 minutes (15 mins to get to you, and 15 to return) – that’s £3,000 (AU$4,950).

The worst case scenario is one where your injury is too severe to be treated at the medical centre at the bottom of the mountain, or the weather is too severe for the chopper to land there.

You’ll end up at a regional hub like Sallanches in France or Innsbruck in Austria, and will be up for about £10,000 (AU$16,500).

Limits Of Travel Insurance You Need To Know About.

OK, this is something I discovered the hard way. If your airline screws up (e.g., a delayed flight causes you to miss a connection, or a cancelled flight means you miss a Taylor Swift concert), your travel insurer won’t help.

But ultimately, in Australia, airlines are responsible for any issues that arise as a result of their operations. It is their responsibility to offer you a replacement flight and, if applicable, accommodation.

This seems reasonable, except that noone appears to be liable for the losses you incur (e.g., whose responsiblity is it to reimburse you for that missed concert ticket?) Yours, it seems.

Enjoy your travels!

Steven