Travelex Travel Insurance: What to Know - NerdWallet (2024)

Purchasing travel insurance can make a lot of sense when you’re planning a trip, especially since its coverage can reimburse you for unexpected — and sometimes costly — expenses.

Travelex is an insurance provider offering a variety of plans to travelers, including coverage for things like medical expenses, trip delays or issues with your flights. Let’s take a look at Travelex travel insurance, what its policies cover and whether purchasing a plan is the right move for you.

Travelex offers six different policies to travelers. Three of these are focused on comprehensive travel benefits, one is only for post-departure coverage and the other two provide coverage primarily for flight-related incidents.

Each of Travelex’s plans has different coverage levels, costs and benefits. Let’s take a look at what each plan includes.

Domestic and international trips: Travel Basic, Travel Select and Travel Med

To compare the costs of Travel Basic, Travel Select and Travel Med plans, we generated a quote for a 43-year old traveler from Texas heading to Switzerland for two weeks with a total trip cost of $5,000.

The Travel Basic plan came in at $167 (3.34% of the total trip cost) while the Travel Select plan was $243 (4.86.% of the total trip cost). The Travel Med plan, which only covers expenses incurred after you’ve started your trip, costs $41 (0.82% of the total trip cost).

Let’s take a look at what each plan includes.

Note: Early purchase benefits are available if you purchase the policy within 15 days of making your initial trip payment.

Travel Basic

The Travel Basic plan is pretty comprehensive on its own, though its limits may be a little low depending on where you’re traveling. It’s possible to add on some upgrades:

Travel Select

Travelex’s most comprehensive plan includes coverage for your children as well as higher limits for most services. It also includes the ability to add on these options:

As of summer 2023, Travel Select also includes unique additional coverage options like:

Travel Med

This option is for travelers who make plans last-minute or who don't need benefits like trip cancellation because they have few prepaid expenses.

While it still provides coverage for unexpected travel situations, its limits are lower than the more robust Travel Basic and Travel Select plans. This plan’s coverage begins on the day you depart for your trip.

The Travel Med plan also allows you to add on rental car coverage if you need it.

Domestic trips: Travel America

Travelex has a United States-specific insurance plan, Travel America, which is valid for a maximum of 14 days. Here’s how coverage for this policy breaks down.

Flight insurance plans: Flight Insure and Flight Insure Plus

If you’re looking for a policy that’ll reimburse you primarily for unexpected flight incidents, the Flight Insure or Flight Insure Plus options may be more your speed.

For these quotes, we used the same 43-year-old Texan heading to Switzerland. The Flight Insure policy came in at $19 (0.38% of the trip cost), while the Flight Insure Plus plan charged $25 (0.5% of the trip cost) for the vacation.

Here are the plan’s benefits and coverage limits.

While many situations are covered by Travelex’s insurance policies, there are some events that aren’t. These include:

To find the full list of exclusions for your specific policy, be sure to review the plan’s benefits schedule.

Picking a Travelex plan online is simple. To do so, you’ll want to navigate directly to Travelex’s website. The homepage will include a search bar into which you can input your information.

Once done, clicking the Get Quote button will generate plan options from which to choose. Here you’ll be able to toggle through the different plans, whether you’re looking for comprehensive coverage, post-departure coverage only or just flight accident coverage.

After you’ve chosen your plan, you’ll be given the option to select add-ons, including things like rental car insurance, Cancel For Any Reason coverage and adventure sports waivers. You’ll then go through the checkout process, which will include filling in your personal information and providing details about your travel plans.

From there, you’ll be taken to the payment page. Once you’ve paid, your policy becomes active.

With several plans from which to choose — and even more add-on options — it may be overwhelming trying to pick a policy that suits your needs. Here are some recommendations: