Travel insurance seen as necessary, survey shows

A new survey by RBC Insurance/Ipsos-Reid shows that while an overwhelming majority of people think travel insurance is important, not all are purchasing it.While 84% of Canadians surveyed said travel insurance was worth the cost to ensure peace of mind, only 60% of people who traveled outside of Canada in the last three years actually purchased the coverage.Travel insurance can cover things including trip cancellation as well as supplementary medical coverage abroad. Perhaps part of the lag in people buying additional insurance comes from survey results which show that some people think their existing medical coverage is complete. About 20% of Canadians think their employee health plans or provincial health insurance will cover 100% of their medical expenses abroad, but acutally these plans generally offer only limited coverage. “We’ve seen many international cases where a traveller has had some kind of medical emergency that required being taken by air ambulance to the nearest hospital and that kind of treatment can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars,” says Stan Seggie, president and CEO of RBC’s travel insurance division.The survey also showed that women were more likely than men to place importance on, and to purchase, travel insurance.