It’s best to book travel insurance as soon as you’ve made your first trip deposit — that way you’ll be covered if something happens before you actually depart. Although making a payment means your travel plans are becoming more real, you’ll probably know it doesn’t mean they’re set in stone. It’s perfectly fine not to know the cost of your trip or the exact dates of travel — these are the types of instances that can be changed once you make final decisions about your plans.
Examples of Insurance Policy Modifications
Most (if not all!) travel insurance policies have a free look period that lets you review the plan terms, conditions, and amount of coverage. Kind of like a return policy, you can cancel or add travelers to your policy within this time, usually around 10-14 days, and get a refund if you decide you don’t want the insurance.
Changes you can make within the 10-14 day free look period:
- Cancel policy and receive a full refund
- Adding or removing a traveler on your policy
Changes you can make after the 10-14 day free look period:
- Changing traveler information such as correcting a name, birth date, or address
- Changing the total trip cost insured if you’ve made more payments towards your trip
- Changing your trip departure date or trip return date
When Should I Make Changes to My Insurance Policy
Despite everything on your list of things to do before you leave on your trip, be sure to make any travel insurance policy changes a priority before departing. If you forgot to adjust your plan coverage and are already en-route to your destination, your trip might not be fully protected. The sooner you can reach out to your insurance company to make changes will be beneficial to you in the long run, as far as coverage goes.
How to Change My Travel Insurance Policy
To actually make modifications to your travel insurance plan, you’ll need to reach out to the travel insurance provider of your policy or the broker you purchased the policy through. Usually, the details and terms of your insurance policy get emailed to you. If you can find this confirmation email, it has helpful information such as the customer service information and policy number that you can reference when contacting the travel insurance company. If you don’t see it the first swipe through, these types of emails could be caught in your spam or junk email folders because they often have images attached to them about your plan.
Here’s a helpful list of contacts to change your travel insurance policy:
Travel Insurance Providers
| AIG Travel Guard | Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1.800.826.4919 |
| Allianz Travel | Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1-866-884-3556 |
| AXA Assistance | Contact to Modify Your Policy Live Chat Option Customer Service Number: 855-341-9877 option 2 |
| Generali Global Assistance | Customer Service Number: 800-874-2442 Live Chat Option |
| iTravelInsured | Contact to Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1.866.347.6673 Customer Service Email: [email protected] |
| Arch RoamRight | Contact to Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1-844-731-7064 |
| Seven Corners | Customer Service Number: 1-800-335-0611 EXT. 2 Customer Service Email: [email protected] |
| Travel Insured International | Refer Here to Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1-800-243-3174 |
| Trawick International | Customer Service Number: (877) 233-4591 Customer Service Email: [email protected] |
| Travelex | Modify Your Policy Customer Service Number: 1-800-228-9792 |
Once you get everything squared away with your new travel information, you should receive a new copy of your policy documents in your email from your travel insurance company or broker. This means that your changes have been made! It’s important to have this updated insurance information with you when you travel.
Why Change My Travel Insurance Policy
Having accurate information about you and your trip on your travel insurance policy could mean the difference between a good or a negative claims experience. Let’s say you decided to add a few days of extra travel at the end of your originally scheduled travel dates, but you forgot to add on coverage to your travel insurance for those extra days before departing. In this case, you’d be without coverage for that extra time spent traveling on that trip. If something happens on the days you weren’t insured, despite the fact you’re traveling on the same trip, you might not be reimbursed for expenses incurred due to a travel delay, for example.
Keep in mind, most providers will not make changes to your policy once you have already departed on your trip or opened a claim. One sure way to prevent this from happening (and from you kicking yourself later) is to double-check your insurance details before you travel.
