Travel Insurance for Nomad Families

Travel insurance is an essential for every trip! I dealt with travel insurance as a Travel Agent and Health Insurance customer service rep. I know most credit card covers don’t cut it, and it is very wise to do your research to find something that ticks all the important boxes. We planned to be living and working around the world, so our needs were different on this trip. We realised travel insurance for nomad families is quite different to your average insurance policy so we went with the insurance recommended by other people living and working around the world.

You need to have repatriation cover (this gets you home) and you want something reliable.

The travel insurance we recommend for nomad families

At the start of our travels we decided to go with World Nomad Insurance as it is used and recommended by many of our favourite travel bloggers. It is especially great for long-term travel because we don’t have a fixed address. You can start and purchase this insurance anywhere in the world.

In 2022, World Nomads paused new insurance policiesfor Kiwis, so we moved across to Safety Wing. This insurance is paid monthly, and it was even more affordable than World Nomads. I’m happy about this!

Although we’d travelled with World Nomads for most of our trips over the past 5 years, until 2020, we hadn’t needed to use it (thankfully). Since we began travelling full-time we’ve had to call for help, and even made some claims. 

Our Claims with World Nomads

• We needed support when my son got a fever while travelling during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m impressed that they responded so quickly and made daily calls to us until we were certain Elijah hadn’t caught the Coronavirus.
• In December, 2020, we needed to use our insurance for our first hospital stay in Vietnam. Aaliyah was admitted for an abscess and we were there for four nights. During this admission World Nomads were amazing. They communicated with us well and the claim was paid out quickly and easily. Again, the support from the nursing team was fantastic. They regularly checked in with us and made sure my daughter was ok.
• At the start of 2021, Rimaha needed to use the private hospital during the Tet Holiday. Again, the contact centre was responsive and the claim was paid quickly.  
• During June, 2021 my laptop was water damaged. It took me a while to get the documentation needed for the claim as we weren’t anywhere near an Apple Store, but World Nomads assured me there is no time limit for claiming. Once the documentation was complete, I forwarded it to the team for processing. Again, this claim was processed no issues.
• In August, 2021 we slightly damaged a rental car. Again, we found the contact centre to be extremely helpful. It took a while to get the rental car agency to co-operate, I had to nag them for months. Fortunately, World Nomads claims team was also nagging them, and the rental car company finally delivered the documents we’d been requesting (after about six or eight months). Once World Nomads had the required info, they paid out again. No problems! If you do experience an issue with a rental car agency, get a quote for repairs before you leave - so you don’t have to wait around for them (especially when you’ve had to leave the country). 

Over the course of almost two years of travel, we’ve had multiple reasons to claim. You definitely need travel insurance as a nomad family! 

Would I Recommend World Nomads as Travel Insurance for Nomad Families?

I’ve got full confidence in the support from the team at World Nomads. I can’t recommend them enough. I did a short run with Safety Wing. During that time I had one hospital experience. I called Safety Wing and their team wasn’t able to answer my questions. They wouldn’t pay direct to any hospital and their response was ‘just pay what you need to and we’ll assess later’. Fortunately, there was no private hospital bills on this occasion. We also didn’t receive any follow up phone calls to check if we were ok.

We were THRILLED when we discovered World Nomads was open for business again (after briefly ceasing insurance for citizens of NZ / Australia during the travel restrictions in 2020/21). 

In 2022, we decided to travel to Bulgaria for a snow season. We knew we’d need snow cover, and again switched back to SafetyWing, as that policy worked better for snow coverage vs paying a whole year of snow cover for a family of six with World Nomads. It seems, at that time anyway, we weren’t able to select snow cover for selected months out of the annual policy we’d usually purchase.

Travel insurance: simple & flexible

We’ve stuck with SafetyWing now since 2022.

Which Insurance Should you choose?

In my opinion, you need to select cover that suits you best. If I had to recommend, I would always suggest World Nomads first as that was great insurance from a brand we trusted and relied upon heavily when we first started our journey.

If you’re looking for something more flexible, with month to month payments and lighter on the pocket for snow coverage, then I suggest SafetyWing.

I think the most important thing is to have cover that will take care of you in emergency situations, and make sure repatriation is covered.

If you’re not sure, make sure to read through the policy and ask questions!

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