Review: SafetyWing Nomad Insurance (ALL You Need to Know)

I have been on the hunt for worldwide travel insurance ever since I became a digital nomad in 2014, the year when I left my home country Germany with the goal to travel the world and live my dream of working entirely online from my laptop.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would actually build this dream! And still live it today, having a home base on the beautiful Gold Coast in Australia, and the freedom to travel and explore the world with the business and lifestyle I built around it. Ultimate flexibility is something I always wanted and if you read this article, you have probably been thinking of traveling long-term too. Heck, it’s the best thing ever!

Important Things To Do Before Take-Off

Before you dive into the digital nomad lifestyle and commence your nomad journey, there are a few things that you should organize.

Among the most important things are:

Figure out how to find and connect to WiFi anywhere you travel. Because you want to order Uber, find directions and let your family know that you are safe, right? Read my article on finding Wi-Fi worldwide here. Another great alternative is getting an innovative eSIM that can cover whole countries of regions.
Find a remote job, so you can make an income on the road and use currency exchange rates to your advantage to build an amazing lifestyle. Read my article on how to find a remote job here.
Organize your money affairs and figure out how to get money out abroad with no hidden fees. Check out TransferWise, the best borderless bank account you will ever have!
Lastly, travel medical insurance is often either overlooked or over-complicated. It took me forever to find comprehensive, nomad-friendly coverage, so I could travel long-term with the peace of mind that I don’t have to fork out hundreds or thousands of dollars if something unexpected happens. Motorbike accidents, lost luggage, food poisoning, it’s all too common.

Evaluate Your Travel Plans & Duration

Do you know where you will be traveling to already? How long will you be gone for?

If your answer is ‘no’ and ‘nope’, it might be hard to find travel insurance where you can get coverage for an unknown destination. Also, if you just want to take off with no end date in mind, you might have noticed that most insurances will need you to specify a date in the future, when you will return to your home country.

Usually, you will also pay the whole policy amount upfront and when you go over the set return date, you may find yourself uninsured. Let that not happen to you!

Over the years, I’ve had to return twice to Germany to renew my travel insurance, as I couldn’t do it on the road, they wanted me to come back and take it out while in my home country. Damn!

I then found myself uninsured while visiting my home country, as I am not registered there anymore and don’t just get health insurance handed to me like that.

As I researched more and more, I found an expat insurance that would take me where I could renew every year, even while I was on the road. However, the price was insane and a whole year of upfront payment hurt my pockets. No monthly payments here. I additionally had to always specify the countries I was going to travel to next. Talk about flexibility or changing plans!

Review: SafetyWing Nomad Insurance

What is SafetyWing Travel Insurance

And so I finally found the ideal nomad insurance called SafetyWing, which offers an insurance policy that gives you ultimate freedom and flexibility when it comes to international health insurance.

SafetyWing offers travel and medical insurance with future plans to build a complete social safety net that works across borders. What a mission! You can read all about their big vision and plans here.

Also included is coverage for travel delays, trip interruption, lost checked luggage, natural disasters and political and emergency medical evacuation.

In this article, I am aiming to provide detailed answers and information to understand SafetyWing Nomad Insurance for long-term travelers and digital nomads. Please note that changes to insurance policies can happen and it is your responsibility to verify and use the information provided at your own discretion. I am an affiliate for SafetyWing Insurance, as well as a consultant.

Get Your Free SafetyWing Insurance Quote

Who is SafetyWing Insurance For

SafetyWing Nomad Insurance is designed for online freelancers, digital nomads, entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to take off to travel for a while with no return date in mind.

The coverage caters well to individuals who may not have a permanent residence or are frequently moving between countries. SafetyWing offers policies that cover medical expenses, emergency medical evacuation, travel delays, and other essential benefits typically needed by global travelers and expatriates.

SafetyWing Insurance Coverage: What's Included

1. Travel And Medical Coverage

In short, SafetyWing covers the following:

Medical Insurance, covers you in the event of unexpected medical problems and accidents where you need to go to a doctor, or hospital or need emergency medical evacuation.
Travel Insurance, covers you in the event of travel delays, lost checked luggage, emergency response, natural disasters and personal liability.

Sounds good in theory, right? Before you start signing up for any insurance policy, make sure you have read the fine print and if you have any additional questions about the nomad travel insurance, you need to ask them directly!

SafetyWing has a customer support chat on their website where you can easily type in your question and get an answer from the team 24/7, they even speak multiple languages!

2. No Cap On Travel Duration

With SafetyWing, you get unlimited coverage with no cap on the duration of travel, which means this can actually become your ultimate long-term health insurance.

This allows you to stay on the road for months or even years without ever finding yourself uninsured or having to fly back to your home country to renew or take out new insurance policies.

You can buy new insurance plans with SafetyWing as many times as you like until you reach 70 years of age, which is their maximum age for coverage.

3. Automatic Monthly Payments, No Big Upfront Costs

Working on an automatic monthly subscription model, you don’t need to make big upfront payments to cover your travel medical insurance that covers you in the sudden event of sickness or accident and you require medical assistance.

Every 28 days, Nomad Insurance extends automatically, until you pick an end date. Just like Netflix but for travel insurance, pretty cool! if you prefer, you can also pay upfront for a specific date range, there are a few drawbacks such as you're not able to add adventure sports or electronics coverage.

4. Coverage When Traveling Back Home

As a nomad, you surely want to visit your family and friends back home at some stage, may it be Christmas, a special birthday or just because you haven’t seen them in a while.

With SafetyWing, you get 30 days of medical coverage in your home country for every 90 days you use the insurance.

If you are from the US, you’ll get 15 days of home country coverage for every 90 days.

5. Available In 180+ Countries

SafetyWing gives you worldwide travel medical coverage and is available for purchase in 180+ countries.

You can also buy SafetyWing insurance when you are already traveling, no need to physically be in your home country when you start your coverage. You simply put a postal address in your home country, which can be your parent’s house for example, and you are good to go!

There are a few countries that are excluded from coverage, including Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Ukraine.

Questions To Ask About Nomad Insurance (Before Buying It)

Here are a few questions you should find out about any travel insurance policy you are thinking of buying:

Is there a deductible on claims? If so, what is it? The deductible is the out-of-pocket cost you need to pay for any medical treatments before your insurance kicks in. Understand, that insurance companies primarily cover large and catastrophic losses that would financially ruin you. A deductible gives the policyholder responsibility to share the cost in the event of an accident. If there is no deductible on an insurance policy, everybody would claim even the tiniest amount which would result in an increase of claims and therefore usually increases the overall cost of a policy, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a deductible, you just need to know how much it is and have that amount saved up in your emergency fund.
Does the insurance cover pre-existing medical conditions?
Are you an adventure junkie? Well, you better make sure what sports and activities are covered. Can you go scuba diving, skydiving, Muay Thai boxing or paragliding without a worry?
How is a claim being made? And how long will it take to be reimbursed? Note that most companies will limit the time for lodging a claim after the incident occurred. Also, if you had belongings stoles, you will need an official police report in most cases.
Do you need your electronic valuables like smartphones, laptops and cameras insured? This may increase policy costs.

Never Assume Anything with Travel Medical Insurance

Additionally to asking these questions, I also encourage you to read the negative SafetyWing travel insurance reviews on Trustpilot. This will help you ask the right questions before you buy your policy and you will not become one of them!

Negative reviews of insurance providers are usually the result of people not reading the policy correctly before buying, assuming this or that was included and feeling entitled to get the money back into their pocket the next day.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You will always need your receipts and if this involves lost or stolen items, make sure to get formal statements of local authorities to prove what has happened.

Record Everything That Happened

I have been sick and needed to go to the hospital a few times over my years of traveling. On one of my earlier backpacking trips, I stayed in a cheap hostel in Chiang Mai and was greeted by bed bug bites all over my legs the next morning.

Through the heat, sweating and not taking enough care of my skin, the bed bug bites got infected and I needed to go to the hospital in Koh Phi Phi a week later to get them treated properly. It was a truly awful experience, and I felt thoroughly disgusted with myself.

Luckily, I recorded everything, had the proper receipts and could make a claim within a few days to receive the money back that I paid in the Thai hospital. The process still took some time to verify my claim and come through, this was before I used SafetyWing!

They recently launched their Nomad Insurance 2.0 with a new and improved claims experience worldwide. So when you start a claim through the online form, it now takes as little as 5 minutes. Plus, you get reimbursed within 2-3 days, no more waiting for your money back for weeks!

SafetyWing Insurance Coverage Inclusions

Below, I want to go into more detail about what exactly is included with the SafetyWing nomad travel insurance.

Please note that the summary below doesn’t contain the full terms and conditions of the policy and is not tailored to any individual or specific needs. To view the full description of coverage, please follow this link.

SafetyWing covers you with travel and medical insurance up to a maximum of USD 250,000 and has a US$250 deductible, which is fairly reasonable.

The key inclusions for SafetyWing long-term travel insurance are:

SafetyWing Medical Insurance Coverage

Local ambulance and hospitalization
Emergency room and urgent care centers
Hospital room and nursing services
Emergency dental treatment
Injury or illness due to terrorism
Prescription drugs for the treatment of a covered injury
Emergency medical evacuation up to US$100,000 lifetime maximum
SafetyWing covers a wide range of sports and activities, including scooter accidents, which are unfortunately very common when traveling Southeast Asia

SafetyWing Travel Insurance Coverage

Trip interruption
Travel delay
Lost checked luggage
Natural disasters
Political evacuation
Personal liability
Accidental death and dismemberment

Add on: Electronic Devices

SafetyWing offers theft coverage for electronics as an add-on feature for an extra US$10. If you have this coverage and your electronics, including laptops, cameras, smartphones, and others listed here, are stolen, you can be reimbursed for their value under certain conditions.

These include taking reasonable care for their safety, reporting the theft to the police within 24 hours, and providing proof of their existence with a receipt (good to save those receipts before your trip into a Dropbox!).

SafetyWing reimburses up to US$3,000 per insurance period, with a maximum of US$1,000 per electronic device and up to US$6,000 in total over the lifetime of the coverage, with no deductible costs.

Add on: Adventure Sports & Activities

If you are into high-risk activities, you should know that SafetyWing expands coverage for another US$10 to include a variety of sports beyond those already covered, such as American football, skiing acrobatics, and scuba diving with certified instructors. However, it excludes professional, organized, rewarded sports, and expeditions, maintaining the requirement for ensuring personal safety.

SafetyWing provides up to US$100,000 in lifetime coverage for these activities, with a deductible of US$250 paid by the insured.

For the full list of included and excluded sports and activities, check the full policy description.

SafetyWing Insurance Exclusions

It's crucial to read the exclusions section thoroughly to avoid assuming coverage for situations that may not be included.

Understanding what is not covered helps in taking necessary precautions. The exclusions apply universally across all parts of the policy and include pre-existing illnesses, non-medically necessary treatments, charges exceeding usual limits, and conditions arising from epidemics or natural disasters if warnings were ignored.

Exclusions also encompass routine and preventative medical examinations, pregnancy-related costs, mental health disorders, congenital conditions, sexual dysfunctions, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV-related illnesses, and cancer.

Pricing: What Does SafetyWing Travel Medical Insurance Cost

SafetyWing starts at an affordable US$56 per 4 weeks for global health insurance coverage for people between 10 and 39 years of age and excludes travel to the US.

If you want to travel to the US, the cost per 4 weeks of insurance is US$104. The price is higher if you include the United States as the medical care cost is simply much higher there than in the rest of the world.

If you are older, these are the prices you will pay for your coverage:

40-49 years: US$92 without travel to the US or US$171 including travel to the US
50-59 years: US$145 without travel to the US or US$282 including travel to the US
60-69 years: US$196 without travel to the US or US$386 including travel to the US