Insurance Archives | Page 4 of 9

Considerations On Travel Insurance Singapore When Traveling Internationally

You’re planning to travel to Singapore next month. Since most of your friends recommended you to visit this country, you obliged. You think that traveling can do wonders for your mind, body, and soul. And because of the stress you’re getting from home and work, you’re looking forward to this trip as your reward to yourself. After all, everyone needs to have a break once in a while, right? However, your expectations of stress-free and convenient travel can become the complete opposite if you experience emergencies along the way. How would you feel when your car had trouble on the way to the airport? Or when the weather suddenly changed after booking your tickets? Or when a family member has to be rushed to the hospital while you were traveling? If you’re traveling intentionally, it’s best if you do it with travel insurance.

Travel insurance is one kind of insurance which is intended to cover emergencies during your trip. These emergencies can include trip cancellation, lost luggage, medical expenses, flight accident and even other losses which you might have experienced while traveling. There are many companies which can offer travel insurance, but you should consider the following before deciding which travel insurance to pay for:

1. The type of coverage: Many companies offer travel insurance, but these companies have different types of coverage. As a customer, this information is something which you should carefully look into. For starters, consider the medical, trip cancellation and baggage loss policy of the travel insurance. You should also assess the default coverage and medical evacuation assistance of the travel insurance. These policies can extend your local medical care when you’re traveling to another country and can help you get home when you need additional medical assistance.

2. Determine what you need: If you’re eyeing to pay for travel insurance, determining what you need is key. Before you decide which travel insurance to get, consider your existing auto, homeowner and medical policies first. If you have health insurance, but your policy doesn’t cover you once you’re traveling overseas, it might be best if you also avail of a medical travel insurance. Comparing policies from your existing insurance and travel insurance can help you save from paying unnecessary costs.

3. Consider your trip: Where you’re going and what you’ll be doing there can help you decide which travel insurance to pick. If you’re traveling to a nearby state for the weekend and you’ll only need to hop on a train for 2 hours to get there, you probably won’t need travel insurance. But if you’re traveling internationally, like in Singapore, for weeks or months, travel insurance is a must. Keep in mind that the more days you spend in a new country, the higher the chances of experiencing baggage problems, medical emergencies, and travel delays are. As a customer, you should strive that all of these expenses during the trip can be covered as much as possible. You should work so your travel insurance can help you save money during the trip, not spend more.

4. Scout for options: Many companies can offer you travel insurance, and AXA SmartTraveller is just one. For you to end up getting the travel insurance tailored-fit for your needs and budget, scout for your options. Ask around from friends and family if they have had travel insurance in the past. Inquire from established companies for their travel insurance policies and compare prices. Doing this might take time, but this can ensure that you find the “perfect” travel insurance for you.

5. Read the entire policy before buying: When a document is written in fine prints, people tend to skip reading it – don’t commit the same mistake when you’re reading your travel insurance policy. Everything – yes, everything – in the policy should be read and understood. If you have any questions about the policy, ask the travel insurance agent about it. Don’t assume that you know everything as this can compromise your entire trip and even put your money to waste.

An Investment Worth Taking

There are many reasons why people decide to travel. Some travel because they’re seeking for adventure and adrenaline while others want to experience rest and relaxation in a new country. But regardless of the reason you want to travel, for sure, you want the experience to be memorable for all the right reasons. You want your travel to Singapore, or to any location, to become one for the books. Although travel insurance will require you to pay more from what you originally budgeted, it can help you achieve all of your travel goals. Travel insurance might be the only thing missing before you can finally bask in the sceneries of a new country!

Key Tips on What to Consider When Taking Out Car Insurance

Whatever your reason may be for buying yourself a car, you should take out car insurance immediately afterward. After all, you wouldn’t want to face legal repercussions for driving without any car insurance. But if it’s your first time to purchase car insurance, it’s easy to do it wrong, especially with so many insurance companies out there offering protection for both your car and your finances. To make taking out car insurance easier for you, here are some key tips to consider:

1. The state where you’re residing would require you to purchase third party cover as a bare minimum

There’s no telling at all when your car might accidentally hit a person or a piece of property no matter how defensive you are with your driving. The person your car hit might get injured or even die. The piece of property that your car had crashed into might become unusable or beyond repair.

Worse, the entire balance of your savings account might not be enough to cover the medical or funeral costs of the person that your car had hit. It might also not be enough to cover the repair or replacement costs of the property that your car has damaged. As a result, most states would require you to buy third party cover as part of the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider.

Unfortunately, third party cover won’t be able to shoulder any damages that your car had sustained as it only covers costs associated with a person or piece of property that your car had hit.

While not a state requirement, you might want to purchase comprehensive cover as well.

On the other hand, if you want any damages that your car had sustained shouldered by your chosen insurance provider, you should buy comprehensive cover instead. This will help with any repair costs associated with your damaged car.

Your car insurance’s comprehensive cover can also act as a third-party cover since the former allows for a wider coverage compared to the latter as evident in its name. The said type of cover can also shoulder you financially in case your car is consumed by fire, stolen, or hijacked.

You might want to include some extra features on top of the car insurance that you’re planning to take out.

Having a third party or comprehensive cover might not be enough once you take out car insurance as it might not sufficiently cover any highly specific damages that your car may sustain at any given time. Thus, you might want to have some extra car insurance features so that you can still get protected no matter what unfortunate situation might happen to your car. Some of those additional features that you can consider including in your car insurance are as follows:

Windscreen cover – useful for when your car’s windshield, side windows, or rear window gets broken or cracked, and you want to recover the cost of having any of them either repaired or fully replaced
Fire and theft cover – as the name implies, useful in case your car either gets burnt to a crisp by fire, stolen by burglars, or hijacked and you haven’t taken out comprehensive cover as part of your car insurance policy
Zero depreciation cover – aims to add value to your car insurance’s comprehensive cover by excluding costs associated with your car’s depreciation in value due to age, wear and tear, etc.

You might want to consider looking into other types of car insurance coverage as well.

As both third party and comprehensive cover of your car insurance might not be enough to help you financially, you might want to consider including the following additional types of car insurance coverage in your car insurance:

Collision coverage – covers repair costs associated with your car after you’ve gotten involved in an accident with another driver regardless if the said incident was your fault or theirs, though you’ll want to add this one only if you’ve bought your car new and not used
Uninsured and underinsured motorist protection – useful if an uninsured or underinsured driver had hit your car since they’re unable to pay any repair costs associated with it but you wouldn’t want to pay those costs out of your pocket at the same time
Personal injury protection – Pays for all medical expenses and lost wages that you or any passengers that you’ve brought along with you in your car would incur after you’ve gotten involved in an accident

The amount of your car insurance premiums depends on the amount of risk that you’re posing to your chosen insurance provider.

Your car insurance premium is the amount of money that you’ll have to pay for the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider. How much your car insurance premium will amount to is proportional to the degree of risk that you’re carrying with you as a driver.

Your chosen car insurance provider would gather information about you including but not limited to your age, criminal record, and residence’s location to determine the degree of risk that you’re posing to them. The higher the risk that you’re posing to your chosen provider, the more expensive your car insurance premium would get.

Thus, if you want to pay an affordable car insurance premium amount, you’ll have to lessen your degree of risk.

Ask your chosen provider if the car insurance would cover you in certain situations other than driving your car or not.

There might be some situations where your car had gotten involved in an accident, but you weren’t the one behind the wheel at the time when the incident had occurred. Or you might have been driving somebody else’s car or a rental vehicle when you’ve gotten involved in an accident.

In cases such as this make sure the provider covers this prior to taking out the insurance to make sure you’re fully covered.

Pay your car insurance premium either as a lump sum or in installments depending on how much money you’re willing to give to your chosen provider.

As already mentioned earlier, the money that you’ll pay is known as a premium. You can pay your car insurance premium in one go covering an entire year and even get a discount from your chosen provider while at it. But if that’s too heavy of a financial burden to you, you can pay your car insurance premium in two, four, or 12 installments instead. However, you should take note that the higher the number of installments, the higher the additional fees that you’ll have to pay as well aside from your car insurance premium amount.

When the policy period expires, they’ll automatically renew it unless it isn’t eligible for renewal anymore.

Right now, there’s no such thing as multi-year car insurance. In fact, the longest car insurance policy period is only a year followed by six months and one month. However, car insurance with a policy period of only one month is usually reserved by providers only for those drivers that they’ve assessed as high-risk. Thus, the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider may have a policy period of either six months or one year.

Once your car insurance’s policy period comes to an end, your provider would automatically renew it, especially as your car insurance is most likely to have an auto-renewal clause included in it. But if your provider didn’t automatically renew your car insurance’s policy period either because you’ve become a high-risk driver or you’ve moved to a different state, you’ll have to take out car insurance from another provider instead.

Conclusion

All 50 states in the U.S. require every car driver passing by the nation’s roads to carry car insurance. Thus, unless you want to break federal and state laws, you should look into car insurance after successfully purchasing a car. However, as you may be clueless about buying car insurance, the above-listed key tips to consider should make taking one out an effortless process for you. After all, better safe than sorry.

Bali is known as the Island of The Gods. It exudes a unique cultural appeal, excites holiday-goers with its natural beaches and tantalizes foodies with its wide-range of culinary cuisines. It is little wonder that Bali is an extremely popular beach destination in South-East Asia. It would not be surprising if some of you have already booked a trip there for the upcoming summer holidays. Before departing for your holidays, don’t forget to purchase your travel insurance policy. Do ensure that your travel insurance policy contains “must-have” features such as medical expenses, emergency repatriation, trip cancellation/curtailment, baggage cover etc.

Travel insurance is important because it offers financial compensation during events such as travel disruptions. For instance, Moung Agung’s eruption in 2017 led to the closure of the airport for several days. As a result, additional hotel accommodation needs to be booked, flights rescheduled and some tourists even sought alternative modes of transportation. All these would add additional costs to your holiday budget. While travel inconveniences are entirely unpredictable, a travel insurance policy purchased in advance could partially offset some of these unforeseen expenses.

Many adventurous tourists visit Bali to try activities such as hand-gliding, para-gliding, diving etc. With its picturesque scenery, Bali boasts many adrenaline-filled activities for the sports junkies. You might want to consider getting travel insurance coverage before attempting these leisure activities. For instance, AXA’s SmartTraveller provides coverage for leisure activities such as parachuting, sky diving, bungee jumping etc. Having a travel insurance policy before attempting these leisure activities could provide an additional level of assurance.

Before embarking on your long-awaited getaway to Bali, it is therefore critical to be well-informed of the best travel insurance policies available in the market. You can compare travel insurance policies on SingSaver and directly purchase one that best suits your holiday needs. Comparing on SingSaver is not only convenient; it also helps you save money on your travel insurance policies!

Update: SingSaver is having a flash sale on 19 – 20 May 2018 on selected insurance products, including AXA, where the first 10 successful applicants in each hour (10am, 4pm, 10pm) get their travel insurance for free! For more details, click here.

What to Consider When Taking Out Truck Insurance

Several vehicles travel along the nation’s roads every day, one of the most visible being the truck. Despite the vehicle’s ill reputation among some motorists, the entire industry revolving around it has made significant and positive contributions in boosting the nation’s overall economy. After all, without trucks, every product that we use wouldn’t be delivered. Whether you’re an owner-operator with a truck of your own or someone who runs a trucking company with a sizable fleet at your disposal and drivers under your employ, you’ll need to take out truck insurance with the following considerations to take note:

1. There are many truck insurance coverage types to choose from – though you should, of course, get only the ones that you need the most.

You may have started shopping around for providers offering the most comprehensive truck insurance policies in the market right now. However, the myriad number of ways that truck insurance can help protect you financially can give you an instant headache as you try to make sense of its various coverage types. Here are the typical types to choose from:

Primary liability insurance is used in case your truck causes either significant physical injuries to any person or damages to property.
General liability insurance acts as a cushion against any risky event that doesn’t involve a truck but is related either directly or even tangentially to day-to-day operations within the trucking industry.
Physical damage insurance which covers any expenses that you’ll incur should your truck ever get involved in an accident. This accident would have caused significant damage to the truck causing it to undergo some repairs to get it back to working condition
Non-trucking liability insurance is taken out in case your truck hits a person or crashes in front of a property, and you aren’t using the vehicle at all for business purposes.
Cargo insurance is needed in case any shipments that you’re supposed to deliver from point A to point B gets either damaged or lost along the way.
Trailer interchange insurance you’ll need if you’ve agreed to have your truck pull another company’s trailer that’s full of goods that need to reach their destination fast.

It’s entirely up to you as to which among the truck insurance coverage types listed above you plan to include as part of your entire policy – though you’re required by the government to get primary liability insurance at the very least.

2. You’ll want to set aside some extra money for increased financial protection.

You may have heard of most – if not all – of the truck insurance coverage types listed above. But the sum of each of their respective cover amounts might still not be enough to protect your finances and other vital assets.

You might, therefore, be forced to pay out of your pocket, especially if you’ve been slapped with a lawsuit after your truck had caused an accident. You don’t want to pay out of pocket. This is where you can look into an umbrella or excess liability insurance to increase your total maximum policy limit. However, you should prepare to spend an additional amount for it.

Still, purchasing an umbrella or excess liability insurance serves as an affordable way of covering any gaps between the various truck insurance coverage types that you’ve decided to use.

3. You can ask the provider to have your payments divided into monthly installments.

You might initially get shocked at the total amount of truck insurance that you’ve taken out from your chosen provider. Even after limiting your coverage types to only those that you’ll need the most, you may still find it expensive.

This is where you’d ask the provider if you can break the amount up into monthly installments. You can either have your total truck insurance amount divided into 12 equal monthly installments or only 10 with the first two months to be settled in full right after you’ve taken out your truck insurance.

You can even make an initial deposit amount to your truck insurance that covers more than its first two months so that the number of monthly installments would become fewer. This can help you afford it long term.

4. If you’re operating more than a couple of trucks, you should take out truck fleet insurance instead.

The considerations listed above when taking out truck insurance are applicable mainly for owner-operators who have only one truck to their name. As someone who runs a trucking company, it’s both very expensive and highly impractical to take out insurance for each of the trucks under your fleet.

Thus, you should take out truck fleet insurance instead which allows you to have all the trucks under your fleet insured under a single common policy, as well as pay reduced premium amounts compared to insurance for single trucks.

Conclusion

When you had first bought your truck – or trucks if you’ve decided to own a fleet, you may have initially thought that as long as you’ve set aside enough money to pay its amortization amount every month, you’re all good to go. That’s only half the battle though as you’ll want to protect yourself from sudden financial ruin once you or the designated driver of your truck gets caught in an accident. Thus, you’ll also have to take out truck insurance, and the above-listed considerations to bear in mind should help make applying for it easier.

Matthew Xavier

Matthew Xavier contributes for InsuranceTruck, where he strives to write blogs that aren’t just informative, but entertaining and delightful to read as well. It may not show outwardly, but Matthew is a poet at heart, and he tries his best to make sure his pieces have a unique flair that his readers are sure to appreciate. He spends his free time working out by running.

Use Medisave To Overcome 11 Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

Health has long been associated with wealth. According to this age-old proverb, good health plays a vital role to reaching a prosperous life. Having poor immune system may lead to more abseentiesm at work or at school. Furthermore, you illnesses are usually accompanied by medicines and medical fees. You waste time and money when you are constantly sick.

The good news is that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has established the National Adult Immunisation Schedule (NAIS) for Singaporeans aged 18 and beyond. You are encouraged to protect yourselves against vaccine-preventable diseases under the NAIS. In the beginning of next month (November 1, 2017), you will be allowed to use your Medisave to acquire recommended vaccinations for the specific population groups that you belong to.

To reduce confusion, I am highlighting that Medisave is different from MediShield. Medisave is the national medical savings account that Singaporeans need to fulfill to cover future medical needs. Individuals or your employers need to regularly contribute as long as you are employed. On the other hand, MediShield is a low-cost medical insurance scheme aimed to pay for larger hospitalization bills.

Now that you are enlightened about Medisave, I must eagerly note that this vaccination scheme is highly encouraged. However, it is not mandated! You are free to discuss your vaccination needs with your trusted physician. You do not want to be allergic to the ingredients of a particular vaccine (e.g., the latest Influenza shot I took was not suitable to individuals who are allergic to egg)! That will only make matters worse.

If you wish to use your Medisave, you must ask your healthcare provider prior to the vaccination. You will be able to use up to S$400 at public healthcare institutions, Medisave-accredited GPs, and private hospitals. The eleven diseases covered by this scheme are:

(i) Influenza;

(ii) Pneumococcal (PCV13/PPSV23);

(iii) Human Papillomavirus (HPV2/HPV4);

(iv) Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis (Tdap);

(v) Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR);

(vi) Hepatitis B; and

(vii) Varicella.

Let us part ways with the significant words stated by the Senior Minister of State for Health – Dr. Lam Pin Min.

Image Credits: pixabay.com

“Vaccination provides a person with protection against infectious diseases, and is one of the strategies to reduce the risk of disease outbreaks in the community. While the coverage for vaccinations under the National Childhood Immunisation Programme has been high for most of the vaccines, there is low awareness of the benefits of adult vaccination for personal protection and protection of at-risk family members. With the introduction of the National Adult Immunisation Schedule (NAIS), we hope to encourage Singaporeans to take up the recommendations made in the NAIS, to protect themselves and their loved ones against the relevant infectious diseases.”

Sources: 1 & 2

Search the site