Most people buy travel insurance at eleven o'clock at night, three days before departure, on a phone, while half-watching something on Netflix. It feels like a box-ticking exercise. Then a scooter slides on gravel in Vietnam, or a laptop disappears from a co-working space in Lisbon, and the policy turns out to cover a two-week beach holiday rather than the life you're actually living.
The good news is that the gaps are predictable. Almost every nomad insurance horror story comes from one of a handful of clauses that nobody reads until it matters.
Check the trip length, not just the price
Annual multi-trip policies are cheap and convenient, but a lot of them cap each individual trip at 30 or 45 days. If you're planning six months across Southeast Asia, that policy covers your first month and politely ignores the rest. Some insurers allow extensions; many don't, or charge enough that a dedicated long-stay policy would have been cheaper from the start.
Two other things to check in the same five minutes:
- Residency and location rules. Many policies require you to be a UK resident and to be in the UK when cover starts. Buying "after you land" is often not an option.
- One-way tickets. Some policies assume a return booking and treat a one-way departure as outside cover, or require you to have a return date.
Also check the geographical limits. A policy sold as "worldwide" sometimes excludes the USA, Canada and the Caribbean, or covers them only as an add-on. That's fine if you're staying in Europe. It's expensive news in a Denver hospital.
Pre-existing conditions: declare, then declare again
This is where most claims fail, and it rarely feels fair. You don't need to be seriously ill for something to count as pre-existing. If you've had investigations, a change of medication, a referral, or a check-up that led to further tests in the last year or two, an insurer may want to know about it.
The trap is quieter than outright dishonesty. You mention your asthma, the insurer screens it out and adds an exclusion, and you assume everything else is covered. Then a chest infection related to that asthma lands you in a clinic, and the claim is declined because the underlying condition was excluded.
Do this instead:
- Read the medical screening questions slowly, and answer them as they're written rather than as you'd describe things to a friend.
- Declare anything ongoing, even if it's stable and you've had no problems for years.
- If a condition is excluded, ask what it would cost to have it included. Sometimes it's a small premium; sometimes it's impossible, and you need to know which.
- Save the confirmation email and the policy schedule somewhere you can reach offline.
If you have a complex medical history, it's worth talking to a specialist insurance broker rather than a comparison site — and for anything involving ongoing treatment or medication, speak to your doctor about supply and access before you leave, not the insurer.
Working abroad is usually not covered by default
Travel insurance is built around holidays. It assumes you're not earning money, not handling other people's equipment, and not doing anything physical for a living. Paid work — including bar shifts, farm work, teaching, yacht crewing — is commonly excluded, and unpaid volunteering sometimes is too.
Remote work sits in a grey area. If you're writing code from a café for a UK client, most insurers won't object, but the wording varies. Look specifically at whether the policy:
- Excludes "business equipment" or caps it separately from personal belongings;
- Requires you to declare that you're working remotely;
- Covers personal liability if you damage property or injure someone while working.
If you're taking a local contract, paying local tax, or doing anything manual, you need more than travel cover. That might be local health insurance, an expat policy, or a nomad-specific plan with proper liability cover. It's worth getting advice on the tax and immigration side too, because insurance is only one of the problems that a local job creates.
Travel insurance protects a holiday. The moment you're earning, living or working somewhere, it's the wrong tool for the job — or only half of it.
Laptops, phones and the unattended-baggage clause
Gadget theft is the most common claim a nomad will ever make, and the most commonly declined. Three limits do the damage.
Single-item caps. A policy might cover £2,000 of belongings in total but only a few hundred pounds for any one item. If your laptop cost more than the cap, you're insuring a fraction of it without realising.
Valuables sub-limits. Cameras, jewellery and electronics are often grouped into a category with its own smaller ceiling.
The unattended clause. Leave a bag under a café chair, on a beach, in a bus luggage rack or overnight in a hostel dorm and many insurers will decline or reduce the claim. Some specifically exclude theft from a vehicle unless items were locked out of sight.
Before you go, photograph your kit, note serial numbers, and keep receipts in cloud storage. After a theft, report it to the local police and get a written report — often the same day, because some insurers require it within 24 or 48 hours. Weigh up separate gadget insurance if you're carrying a lot of expensive hardware; it usually handles single-item limits better than a travel policy.
The activities you'll actually do
Nobody plans to hire a scooter and then crash it. It's simply what happens. Standard policies often exclude scooters and motorbikes above a small engine size, or require a licence valid for that vehicle, a helmet, and sometimes a full motorcycle licence rather than a car one. Riding without the right licence can void the whole claim, including your medical costs.
The same logic applies to trekking above a certain altitude, scuba diving beyond a set depth, skiing, climbing and anything with "extreme" in the name. These are usually available as add-ons. Buy the add-on for what you might realistically do, not just what's on the itinerary.
A pre-departure routine that takes ten minutes
Before you pay, open the policy wording and search for four words: exclusion, unattended, duration and work. Then check the excess per claim, the emergency assistance number, and whether you're expected to call the insurer before treatment or pay and reclaim afterwards.
Write the policy number and emergency number on a card in your wallet and in your phone's notes, and leave a copy with someone at home. Save the claims deadline for lost or delayed baggage, which is often surprisingly short.
If a claim does go wrong, the reasons are almost always administrative rather than dramatic: a condition not declared, a receipt lost, a police report never filed. Fix those in advance and insurance becomes what it should be — boring, cheap, and quietly there when the scooter slides on the gravel.
Photo: Kampus Production / Pexels
