What is travel insurance?

Travel Medical Insurance covers emergency medical care expenses if you are suddenly and unexpectedly sick or if you have an accident while outside your home province. Your provincial health plan only covers a fraction of any health care expenses incurred outside of Canada and it limits coverage when you are travelling to another province. Should you get sick or injured during your trip, Travel Medical Insurance will cover all or most of your medical expenses up to a predetermined limit. This coverage will protect you against the high cost of health care, and potentially save you from financial ruin should you unexpectedly need health care outside of your home province. For more on Travel Medical Insurance, click here.

Trip Cancellation Insurance will reimburse you for the amount of pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses (e.g. airline, cruise, train, hotel, etc.) that you have insured, should you cancel your trip before departure for an unforeseen covered reason.

Trip Interruption Insurance is similar to Trip Cancellation coverage, but covers you while you are on your trip for a list of covered reasons. In case of a covered reason you are required to return home, Trip Interruption Insurance will reimburse you for the lost portion of your trip, as well as any additional expenses for a last-minute flight home.

Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption Insurance are often sold together as a bundle. You can also add Travel Medical Insurance to the bundle.

For more on Trip Cancellation and Interruption Insurance, click here.

Yes, some credit cards provide travel insurance as a benefit when you use that particular card to purchase your trip, but not all cards do so. Credit cards designed for travelers generally cover the two main categories of Travel Insurance mentioned above. But there may be age limits, different lengths of coverage depending on age, and the range of coverage provided by those cards can also vary. For example, some credit cards provide Trip Interruption Insurance but not Trip Cancellation Insurance, while others provide both. In addition, the maximum amount of coverage can be much less than the total cost of your trip. If you’d like to learn more about how Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption Insurance works on credit cards, please click here. If you’d like to learn about how Travel Medical Insurance works on credit cards, please click here.

A number of banks and credit unions in Canada, including most CAFII member financial institutions, offer Travel Medical Insurance and Trip Cancellation and Interruption Insurance to their existing customers. Employees at CAFII member institutions are trained and knowledgeable about the products they sell, and they can be conveniently reached in branches or at call centres. You can find a list of CAFII member institutions at: https://members.cafii.com/index.php/members_voting.