BHUBANESHWAR: Domestic travel insurance may just get a new lease of life in the wake of the recent Kerala disaster. While booking tickets for travelling within the country, most of the travellers decline to buy travel insurance from agents despite insurers offering policies at prices as low as Rs 30 for a seven-day trip. So far, travellers have mostly bought policies while travelling abroad and that too because it is a pre-requisite for the issuance of visas in several countries.
It is good to be optimistic that nothing can go wrong, especially on India where help isn’t difficult to get, but it could get really troublesome if things do go wrong. To avoid such mishaps, industry insiders feel that it makes sense to buy protection against all kinds of disaster that can strike during a travel. To strike a chord, experts say that with the onset of monsoon companies are also making efforts to highlight the need for add-on protection covers to deal with related exigencies.
Currently, the Rs 50-crore domestic travel constitutes less than seven per cent of the insurance business. “Lack of awareness amongst travellers on travel insurance benefits is the biggest challenge,” said Bhaskar Nerurkar, head of health administration team, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.
A travel policy also contains non-medical covers such as flight delays, cancellation taking place due to unavoidable reasons and emergencies, baggage loss, baggage delay or accommodation charges due to trip delay. “To avoid any major out-of-pocket expenses in case of a natural disaster like floods, earthquakes or an epidemic, dedicated assistance services such as medical treatment, medical evacuation, repatriation, emergency cash advance and similar services is well taken care of by the insurer,” said Nerurkar. He added that sometimes, to compensate the loss insurers often give added benefits such as a child-education bonus. According to experts, most of the policies also provide cover for ‘terrorism’ but schemes may vary.
A senior official from ICICI Lombard pointed out that more travellers start opting for travel policies post natural calamities, thus benefitting the insurance companies in the medium to long-term. “We anticipate a rise in the number of policies—both domestic and foreign travel—this year,” he added.
However, one needs to ensure purchasing an overall travel insurance and not just an accident cover which most travel portals offer and customers, too, end up buying without much validation. Insurers like Apollo Munich, Bajaj Allianz, Tata AIG, ICICI Lombard, HDFC Ergo offer products to suit all categories of the masses.