Check if trip insurance is worth it.
Travel insurance bundles two very different products and they should be judged separately. Cancellation cover is a straightforward bet: your non-refundable exposure, less whatever cover you already hold, multiplied by your honest chance of claiming, compared against the premium. Judged on that basis alone most policies are poor value, which is exactly how insurers price them. Emergency medical cover is the opposite. It insures a tail risk with no upper bound related to trip cost — an air ambulance repatriation can run to six figures regardless of whether the holiday cost 400 or 4000. That asymmetry, not the cancellation arithmetic, is the real reason to buy.
Net exposure
Exposure = non-refundable trip cost - cover already held
Expected recovery
Expected = net exposure x claim likelihood%; compare against premium
Not insurance advice. Cover, exclusions, limits and pre-existing condition terms vary enormously between policies and jurisdictions, and this calculation cannot assess whether a specific policy suits your circumstances. Read the policy wording in full and seek advice from a regulated insurance adviser before relying on any cover.
Because its potential loss is unbounded and unrelated to what the trip cost. An emergency hospital admission plus repatriation from abroad can reach six figures, and no amount of savings covers that reliably. Cancellation cover protects a known, capped amount you can often absorb.
Often partially. Many premium cards include cancellation cover and some medical cover, but limits are frequently low, activation may require paying for the trip on that card, and pre-existing conditions and adventure activities are commonly excluded. Read the actual certificate rather than the marketing summary.