Last minute travel insurance leads to potential problems.

The number of people travelling abroad is rising rapidly and one mistake many people have made is to leave buying their travel insurance to the last minute. With potential problems occurring, it is always best to leave yourself enough time to buy your policy and to ensure you are fully covered.

Understandably the excitement of booking your holiday takes over and you often forget until the last minute to buy travel insurance . However, the best solution is to buy your travel insurance at the same time, this allows you to assess what you need and what you are covered by. Recent figures show 63% of the public leave buying their policy until 2 weeks before with a further 47% wait until a week before.

Leaving it until 2 weeks before may lead you to panic buy which often results in the person not fully understanding what they are covered for. For example, some holiday insurance policies may not cover you if you have any pre-existing medical conditions and you become ill during your holiday. Other potential problems are if there are airport strikes, political unrest (as recently seen in Kenya) or any other unforeseen problems. All this means it is vital to read the small print to ensure you fully understand what you will be covered for.

It may be the case you do not need to buy travel insurance, some banks offer you travel insurance on some deals and all you need to do is ring up and activate it. Again, if this is the case then double check to find out what the cover is. For everyone else, finding cheap travel insurance is important and some policies are more suitable for people than others. Policies can range from £750 to £3000, so it is important to know what you need, e.g. a £750 policy may not be sufficient for a family of four.