Ian Graham, Founder and Executive Director, Hamtern Financial Services
Many international travellers already have some level of insurance through premium bank cards or bundled benefits and then add a standalone policy or specialist extensions on top, believing it leaves them better protected. But it often works the other way around.
The misunderstanding is assuming that more policies mean more payout. Insurers will coordinate claims across policies, and the total payout will not exceed the actual loss.
As global travel becomes more complex in the wake of geopolitical conflict, travellers are increasingly turning to what is often described as a layered insurance approach. Base cover from bank cards or bundled products is supplemented with additional policies to address perceived gaps, particularly around cancellation, disruption, and high-value travel.
This shift is not insignificant. Trip cancellation and interruption cover accounts for an estimated 50–70% of travel insurance premiums, reflecting how much value travellers place on protecting prepaid journeys.
Multiple policies, or what is often referred to as layering, introduce confusion. Different insurers define cover differently. They respond to different triggers. They apply different limits, excesses, and exclusions. When something goes wrong, the question becomes less about whether you are insured and more about which policy responds and how. Overlapping cover does not necessarily close those gaps.
The bigger issue is that travel risk itself has changed. Trips are more expensive. Routes are more complex. Disruption, whether due to airline schedules, geopolitical tensions, or operational issues, has become more frequent. Insurance does not respond to disruption but to defined events.
A delay, for example, is not automatically covered simply because it results in financial loss. The cause of that delay needs to fall within the policy wording. Many policies contain explicit exclusions for events such as war, civil unrest, or large-scale disruption.
This is where layering can give a false sense of security. A traveller may have cancellation cover through one policy, medical cover through another, and additional benefits through a bank card. On paper, that looks comprehensive. In practice, each policy operates within its own framework. If those frameworks do not align with what actually happens during the trip, gaps will remain.
The real shift is not toward more insurance, but toward understanding how that cover is structured, where the gaps lie, and how those gaps align with how people are travelling.
For corporate travellers and high-net-worth individuals, the focus should not be on layering policies. It should be on making sure that the cover matches the trip. That includes understanding what triggers a claim, where exclusions apply, and how different policies interact.
The risk today is not travelling without insurance. It is travelling with the assumption that you are fully covered, and only discovering the limits of that cover when it matters most.
